


Homecoming

by silverbirch



Category: Stardew Valley (Video Game)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-12-11
Packaged: 2021-02-23 10:48:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 25,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23976856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silverbirch/pseuds/silverbirch
Summary: Concerning Alex, and the loss of his free time; a rich boy, trying to prove he can make it on his own; and the formation and sundry adventures of the Pelican Town Anti-Joja League.
Relationships: Alex/Male Player (Stardew Valley)
Comments: 55
Kudos: 129





	1. The Baby Bird

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gremble](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gremble/gifts).



“Alex, dear?”

Alex pauses, absently cracking another egg into the pan. That tone in Grandma’s voice never means _anything_ good.

“Yeah?” he asks, kissing his free time for the day goodbye. Not that he doesn’t have like, a lot of free time, but still.

Grandma Evelyn looks pensive, squeezing her knotted hands together. It gives Alex a mini panic attack, to realize she’s so old. Grandpa George has always seemed ten years older than dirt. But Grandma, Grandma’s not allowed to go anywhere.

“I think you should check up on that nice young man,” Grandma says. “Here, dear, let me get that.”

“I can scramble eggs, Grandma,” Alex protests.

“Of _course_ you can, dear,” Grandma says.

Grandma’s memory is long. She remembers the kitchen fire, oh yes. Alex doesn’t suppose pointing out that he’d been nine at the time would work any better than it had any of the other times he brought it up. He gives up and sits down at the table. Arguing with Grandma is a pointless exercise, like jogging. 

Alex has met the _nice young man_ a time or two. Too skinny and too tall. Alex doesn’t like it much when guys are taller than him, even if, like the Nice Young Man, Alex could probably beat them up with zero effort. He’d been wearing a white button up with yellow road dust clinging to it, and had shaken Alex’s hand very seriously, like a Disciple of Yoba going door-to-door. The handshake and the apologetic please-don’t-hit-me smile said _dork_ . The shirt and pants and muddy-but-still-way-nicer-than-anything-in Alex’s-closet shoes said _rich kid._

Alex doesn’t like rich kids. 

“What was his name again?” Grandma asks, producing sliced salami and shredded cheddar cheese from the Grandma Dimension and adding it to the pan. Surely he’d have seen her chopping it. Wait, how did the cheese grater get into the sink? Man, he’s never gonna get the hang of this cooking thing

“Tahan,” Alex says, blinking. Somehow, a plate of eggs appeared. He glances down at his lap. Yup, a cloth napkin. He’s tried to explain to the other kids in town that his Grandma is an elderly ninja. None of them believe him, the bastards. 

“Oh that’s right,” Grandma says, pulling a tray of cookies--okay, come on now, _he would have noticed her baking cookies, what the hell_ \--out of the oven. “I worry about him. That old farm is a dreary place. No place for a nice young man.”

Alex knows the old farm pretty well. It was widely reputed to be haunted, for one, and the old cabin had been a primo place to smoke cigarettes and bone down for the teens of Stardew Valley for decades. Alex hoped Tahan had like, washed his sheets. It was probably tied with the pantry in the busted old community center for Place Where Most People in Town Lost Their Virginity. 

Oh well. Nothing good lasts forever.

“You’ll run these over to him, dearie?” Grandma says, putting the cookies in a linen-lined basket. With _polka dots._ Alex suppresses the urge to ask if he needs to skip down the lane while he delivers them. Knowing Grandma, her answer will be yes.

“I dunno, did you save me any cookies?” He gives her the grin that worked better when he was a chubby cheeked eight-year-old, not now that he’s all manly and chiseled and stuff, but what the hell. 

Grandma smiles and makes a little gesture. Alex’s empty plate has been replaced with a white dish with two cookies, and a big glass of milk.

“Okay seriously how did you even do that,” Alex can’t help asking.

“You’re not very observant,” Grandma replies, before she bustles outside to water her peonies. 

<><><>

It’s a brief walk-- _not_ skip--to the farm. It’s a bright sunny day, but it hasn’t gotten as hot like it will in the summer. Alex basically lives at the beach then. The old rutted road is still spotted with puddles from the rain the day before. He manages to make it to the rusty old gate to the farm without _completely_ ruining his sneakers, but it’s a near thing. 

“Blasted--stupid-- _thing!_ ” Tahan’s voice carries. 

It’s not like he has a fancy accent or anything, but everything he says sounds kinda… rounded around the edges and flat in the middle, like the bad guys in all those black-and-white movies Grandma likes to watch when Grandpa isn’t hogging the television. Alex guesses it’s probably just what you sound like when you go to sleep on a huge pile of money every night, like a millionaire gerbil. 

“You--will--not--defeat me!” Tahan says, and Alex hears a dull metallic thumping, over Tahan’s panting. The old farm is more than half forest, a mess of scrubby trees, stumps and rocks. He can see a flash of movement out by the old cabin.

He finds Tahan with his sleeves rolled up, shirt soaked with sweat, hacking at a tree stump with an axe that makes a dull metallic noise every time it bounces off the stump, which somehow manages to look smug. The edge of one side shows some splintering from Tahan’s efforts. Alex guesses he’ll finish chopping the thing in about five thousand years.

“Stupid, stupid, stupid--” Tahan says, before he raises the axe above his head, legs wobbling, in a move that Alex is 100% sure will result in him chopping himself right in the balls. Alex figures Grandma will give him _such_ a lecture if he sits there and watches the Nice Young Man bleed out.

“You, uh, okay there dude?” Alex says, and Tahan gives an aborted yelp and spins around. Alex is really glad he’s about five feet back, because Tahan spins the axe around at the same time. Like a really unsteady ballerina with a machete in her hand.

“Why don’t you put the axe down?” Alex says, eyeing the blade cautiously. 

“Oh, hello Alex,” Tahan says, smiling brightly. His pupils are big. Really big. “What brings you to my little paradise?” He sets the axe down carefully on the stump; for some reason, Alex suspects Tahan is upset he doesn’t have a doily to set under it. 

Alex looks around. There’s no way around it: the place is a dump. He halfway expects to see a medium-famous Gridball player walk by, talking to the camera about how _you_ can help refugees from the Gotoro Wars. 

“Grandma baked you some cookies _oh shit--_ ” Alex says, and he manages to keep Tahan upright as he stumbles. Close up, he’s very flushed, and although his shirt is soaked, he’s not sweating anymore. 

“I’m fine,” Tahan says. “Just, you know. Living the life.”

“Yeah, looks like it,” Alex says. “Why don’t we, uh, sit down on the porch?” 

“That sounds like a _good_ idea,” Tahan says, before his eyes roll back. Alex lets him drop to the ground, because Tahan isn’t a chick and this isn’t a harlequin romance. 

“Meeeblerpherngh,” Tahan mutters into the dirt. Even his delirious babbling sounds fancy. 

<><><>

For all his height, Tahan weighs about as much as Grandma, so Alex drags him over to the porch without much trouble. Dousing him with a bucket of well water is even kind of fun. Tahan comes to, sputtering. 

“Oh my god,” Tahan says, and Alex notices his voice is kinda deep. Not as girly as his… everything would imply. “How embarrassing.”

“Yeah, it’s pretty humiliating,” Alex says cheerfully. “I’m gonna tell _everyone._ Here, drink some water.”

“I would like all of the water, please.” Tahan says. 

“Drink it slow. You’ll just puke otherwise.” Years of Gridball practice had taught him about dehydration. Alex guessed Tahan was too busy drinking espresso or champagne to know much about it. 

“I’m sorry,” Tahan says. “I’m, um, very new to this.”

“You don’t say,” Alex says, scooping out a mouthful of water and passing it to Tahan. He drinks it down, almost choking.

Tahan brushes his wet black hair back. It’s way too long, and when it’s dry it’s really shiny, like he uses that same stuff Hailey swears by. His skin is fairly dark, but Alex tracks sunburn on his cheeks and arms anyway. “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.” Alex says. 

“No, really--”

“I mean don’t mention it,” Alex says. “I have a rep to maintain.” 

“Oh, of course,” Tahan says faintly. “I don’t understand. The axe doesn’t seem to be… choppy enough.” 

“I think you need a better one,” Alex says. “Clint could help you with that.”

“Clint…?”

“Beard, plaid, never been on a date?”

“Oh. Yes. The husky gentleman,” Tahan says. “Thank you. Again. You’re very kind.”

“Shut up, no I’m not. You’re like a baby bird that fell out of the nest,” Alex says. “What the hell are you even _doing_ out here, man?”

“Failing,” Tahan says, looking down at his-- _holy shit again_ \--really bloody palms.

“Dude!” Alex says, grabbing his wrist. Tahan’s palms are covered in broken blisters, slick with blood and grosser stuff. “Doesn’t that hurt?”

“Rather a lot, yes.” Tahan says, blinking. His eyes keep darting from Alex’s hand, and back to his face. 

Alex counts to ten. He thinks back to senior year, when the freshmen couldn’t get out of bed or zip up their pants without breaking something, tearing something, or flunking out of geometry. When Alex’s quest to graduate or get drafted or at least get a blowjob in the back of someone’s car had been interrupted every five minutes by one baby idiot crisis after another. 

“We’re gonna go see the doctor,” Alex says, slowly and patiently, like he’s talking to a _really dim_ frosh in the weightroom. “And we’re gonna get this all fixed up, okay?”

“That sounds like a tremendously intelligent idea,” Tahan says. “Oh, and Alex?”

“Yeah?”

“I will, in all likelihood, need my wrist back.”

“Oh, right,” Alex says, and lets go. 

“Lead the way,” Tahan says.

“Good to hear you say that, because I’m not gonna carry you,” Alex says. “Come on, I’ve got stuff to do today.”

“My hero,” Tahan says, putting a hand to his chest.

“Shaddup.” 

“Wait,” Tahan says, eyelids fluttering. “I think I feel a faint coming on…”

“Go ahead. The coyotes could use a meal,” Alex says, walking back towards the town.

“Wait, what?” Tahan’s voice is slightly higher now. Alex grins as he hears Tahan scramble after him through the brush. “What was that about coyotes…?”

<><><>

“How was the nice young man dear?”

“Hopeless,” Alex says, making towards the bathroom so he can rinse off all the secondhand Rich Fancy Boy smell. Who wears _cologne_ to chop up tree stumps? “He’s totally gonna die out there.”

Alex gives Grandpa’s bald head a rub as he passes. 

“Punk kid,” Grandpa says.

“Dinosaur,” Alex replies fondly. 

“That’d be a shame,” Grandma says from the kitchen. “You’re just going to have to keep an eye on him.”

Alex pauses in the door to the bathroom, letter jacket already on the hook, shirt half off. “I am?”

“Yes. You are,” Grandma says. It’s amazing. Her voice is as sugary as it always is, but Alex can hear the iridium underneath it. 

Alex lets the bathroom door cut off his long, drawn-out groan. There goes his free time, for the _rest of eternity._

Or until Tahan, like, dies. Which, considering he’d nearly killed himself clearing a parsnip patch, how long could that take?

Alex tries to focus on the positive. He’s smiling by the time he turns the faucets.


	2. The Guy Gets Around

In front of a bookshelf of unread books, Alex does crunches and does his best not to think. 

He knows how people see him. Most of his classmates--especially that spikey-haired little wannabe-skater punk Sam--would laugh in his face if he ever told them that he thinks about anything. And it’s true, he tries to avoid it whenever possible. Doubts are for weaklings. For crybabies. 

But as he counts off  _ two-fifty seven, two-fifty eight _ he can’t help but wonder what all this effort is actually  _ for. _ He’s not a gridball player anymore, and it seems less and less likely that a scout for the majors is going to roll up to Pierre’s and ask around for dudes who are  _ really good _ at throwing balls. Even his drifting-off-to-sleep daydreams have a tough time bridging that gap.

It’s not like he needs killer abs to work the ice-cream cart. (Though it makes Pam’s daily stop  _ really  _ uncomfortable--if she undressed him with her eyes any harder, she’d break his ribs.) And it’s not like he hasn’t known every girl in town for his entire freaking life, and they all know every embarrassing thing about him, like how he used to have to break potato chips in half to get them through the rubber bands on his retainer. Sweet Yoba, he wouldn’t even date  _ himself, _ knowing that. That means waiting for someone new to come to town. Someone who isn’t (A) a dude and (B) a dude who sounds like he eats nothing but that nasty rich person mustard with all the seeds in it. 

He reaches three hundred and rests for a second, the hardwood flooring cool against his bare back. Damn it, he wishes the gym would reopen. He’s got a dirty workout outfit in there that’s probably a biohazard by now. 

He gets up and cracks his neck, grabbing his clothes. Shower first, then… do what? Go to the saloon and play videogames? See if Abigail wants to go to the lake?

He gets that weird panicky feeling again, and shoves it down. He’ll figure it out. He always does.

He hears talking from the kitchen. Grandma’s warm, scratchy voice, and something that sounds an awful lot like…

“Oh, good morning, dear!” Grandma says as Alex enters the room. 

And sitting at the dining room table, looking annoyingly spic and span for so early in the morning, is Tahan. He’s got his hair styled into a... swoopy bird-shape… thing, that makes half of Alex want to sneer and the other half want to pull Tahan aside and ask him what product he uses. Tahan is holding a cup of tea, because of  _ course _ he drinks tea, probably never drinks anything else. He looks up when Alex enters, and brightens--and then immediately looks down again, turning one of those weird red-purple colors only chicks know the name of. Probably horrified by what Alex is wearing, or rather,  _ not _ wearing--namely, a shirt. Or pants, depending on whether you think gym shorts four inches above the knee count.

Alex rolls his eyes. Tahan should be wearing a monocle, so it could pop off in dismay at the  _ barbarity  _ of it all. 

“Hello, Alex!” Tahan says, still making steady, confident eye contact with one of Grandma’s ferns. 

“‘Sup, you. Hey Grandma,” Alex says, reaching out to grab a muffin from the steaming basket in the middle of the table. Grandma swats his hand with a wooden spoon. 

“Shower and dress, dear, we have company,” Grandma says. “Honestly, Tahan, some days I’d swear he was raised by wolves.”

“I was raised by  _ you, _ just saying,” Alex says. 

“It’s not nice to remind an old lady of her failings,” Grandma says, smiling up at him, wrinkly and sweet as a dried-apple doll. 

“I’m sure you tried your best, Mrs. Mulner,” Tahan says, smiling up at her engagingly. Asshole.

“Please, Tahan, call me Evelyn.” 

“You can call me ‘sir’!” Grandpa yells from the living room. “Does the kid have clothes on yet?”

“No, love,” Grandma says. 

“What was he, raised by wolves?” 

Tahan chuckles, and takes another sip of tea. Alex frowns. For some reason, Grandma and Grandpa doing their comedy act for Tahan makes him… kinda sad and kinda mad at the same time. They’re  _ his,  _ damn it. His and nobody else’s

He manages to evade Grandma and her Wooden Spoon of Judgment and grab a corn muffin before heading to the bathroom to get himself put together. Tahan’s eyes track him to the door--probably taking notes for his Yacht Club or whatever on the grooming habits of the Southern Ferngill Brown-Crested Poor Person. 

Weirdo.

<><><>

Tahan’s gone by the time Alex gets out--probably had to go shop for top hats at the caviar store--and Alex is relieved. Twice in one week is a little much.

“Such a sweet boy,” Grandma says, buttering another muffin and pouring a glass of orange juice for Alex. “He brought a gift, you know!”

It was a single filthy, scraggly-looking parsnip, greens and all. Why Tahan had felt the need to wrap it in heavy silver paper with a dark grey ribbon (that even Alex can tell is velvet just by looking at it), he supposes they’ll never know. 

“It’s the thought that counts,” Alex says, staring at the sad-looking thing. Doesn’t count for much though. 

“Run to Pierre’s and get five more,” Grandma says, picking up the dirty thing with thumb and forefinger like it’s actively on fire. “We’ll mash it up for dinner.” 

<><><>

And all of a sudden, Tahan is everywhere.

Alex goes to Pierre’s for eggs and protein power (Grandma says, with implied army trumpets in the background, that Alex will buy groceries in  _ Hell _ before he buys from Joja-Mart)--and there’s Tahan, trading a double armful of dirty parsnips for five sacks of seed potatoes.

He goes walking on the beach (still too chilly to sunbathe, but Alex is going to  _ tan _ this year, damn it)--and there’s Tahan, rooting through piles of dead kelp for (apparently) clamshells, which he puts in Grandma’s cookie basket. He waves, but Alex has urgent business by the pier and pretends not to see it. 

He goes for a jog  _ (ugh)  _ around the lake--and there’s Tahan, hacking at weeds with a long, wickedly bladed scythe that makes Alex (who remembers his ballet-dancer swing with the axe)  _ itch  _ for adult supervision. 

One day, though, he’s crossing the stone bridge, listening to music and not really paying attention, and he nearly walks smack-dab into Tahan, who’s fishing off the bridge. Or attempting to, anyway, since the bucket next to him contains nothing but trash and an awful lot of algae.

“Oh, hello!” Tahan says, eyes widening with a show of delight. Like,  _ Look, it’s my favorite monkey! _ Alex groans inwardly and pulls out his headphones.

“Uh, yeah, hi,” Alex says. “Fishing, huh?”

“Well, sort of,” Tahan says. “There  _ are _ fish in this river, yes? If I keep trying, I will eventually catch actual fish, correct? Like fish… fish?”

“Yeah, if you don’t suck at it,” Alex says. “That’d be a first step.”

Considering Tahan’s fishing pole is a bamboo garden stake with cotton string dangling from it, lack of talent might be the least of his problems.

“Show me,” Tahan says, handing the pole to Alex. “O mighty Fishmaster, show me the way.”

“This pole is a total piece of crap, dude.”

“It is a shoddy craftsman,” Tahan says, puffing himself up, “who blames his tools.”

“Says the guy who almost chopped his nads off with a garden axe.”

“I blame the heat,” Tahan says, and proceeds to prove that he is, at least, smarter than a first semester JV gridball player, when he picks up one of those fancy double-walled water bottles and takes a swig. Tahan beams at Alex and flexes his… what passes for biceps, since the dude has arms like an ostrich's legs. “I eat tree stumps for breakfast.”

With that nasty seedy mustard, no doubt. Alex grabs the pole, narrowly avoiding touching hands with the guy, and makes a cast. Sort of. The lure is a freaking  _ golf ball _ and yarn has a lot of drag.

“Hmm,” Tahan says after ten seconds. “See, no fish. I bet they’ve already been eaten…” He trails off as Alex’s line jerks suddenly. “Oh, come now, that’s not even  _ funny.” _

“Bow,” Alex says, given the rod a sudden yank,“before the Fishmaster.” 

It’s a good line, but it’s wasted on the catch, which turns out to be a neon blue can of Joja Cola. Tahan scowls down at it, carefully unwinding the yarn. The fishhook went right through the pop tab.

“What, not a fan?” Alex asks. 

Tahan’s lips form a straight line, almost white. His fingers make little dents in the can. “ _ Emphatically _ not,” he says. “And… this can is still  _ full _ . How in the hell…”

“I guess you don’t have to bow before the Fishmaster.”

“I’d bow before the Litter King, but I’m a few points ahead,” Tahan says, gesturing at his bucket of algae and trash. He sets the cola down on the bridge’s railing and looks at it mournfully, like it ran over his dog. “That’s not even the only pair of glasses I’ve fished up today.”

“This river is kinda gross,” Alex says, looking down at the sun-dappled water. 

Tahan says nothing. The long gap in his non-stop bird chatter is notable enough that Alex glances over at him, and finds Tahan glowering at the Joja-Mart with the same look that Dusty gets whenever Shane walks by. Hostility, with a hint of murder.

Alex does some staring himself. Then, very gingerly, like a man reaching out to touch a hot surface, he nudges Tahan’s tense shoulder with his fist. “You okay there, bro?”

Tahan shakes his head, and smiles down at the river. “It’s kind of you to ask.”

“I--”

“Hey guys?” Sam says, announcing himself with a clatter of skateboard wheels and doing that  _ frigging annoying _ thing he does, where everything he says sounds like a question. “Great day out? How are you doing?” 

“Hello, Sam,” Tahan says, jaw clenching briefly. 

“Yo,” Alex says, nodding curtly. However much he’s bullied Sam in the past, he wishes he’d done it harder, and more. He has to fight the urge to grab the skinny little pest by his spiky pompadour and throw him in the river. 

“Fishing, huh? That’s cool. You gonna drink that?”

“Actually--” Tahan begins.

“Too slow!” Sam crows. He swipes the can--still covered in river slime--and takes off on his skateboard, popping the tab and taking a loud swig as he goes. 

Tahan looks faintly green. For once, Alex feels the same way.

“In a word,” Tahan says, staring after Sam, who’s already finished the can, squashed it flat against his forehead, and tossed it into a bush on his way to Joja-Mart,  _ “Yick.” _

“Yeah, even for Sam,” Alex says. “No joke, one time he ate a salamander on a dare.”

“Urgh,” Tahan says, going even greener. “Well… I mean, I did strange things in kindergarten too…”

“He was  _ sixteen.” _

That seems to distress Tahan, like,  _ a lot,  _ so Alex gives him a moment. Somehow, without noticing it, they’ve wound up both leaning against the handrail, about a foot apart. It’s weirdly friendly. 

“This place is wonderful, Alex, truly, but sometimes… I think it might be a little odd,” Tahan says slowly.

“Wonderful?” Alex says, laughing. “ _ Stardew Valley? _ Dude. You need to get out more.”

Tahan makes another one of those half-smile, half-sad, half-angry faces that Alex is starting to notice he makes a lot. He raises a hand like he’s going to pat Alex on the shoulder or something, pauses, and lets it drop. Which, good, because, y’know. Weird.

“So should you,” Tahan says seriously, which Alex doesn’t even pretend to understand. 

He feels that weird sweaty palm-and-neck thing he always felt before a big game. Allergies, probably. 

“Um, well,” Alex says after a long moment. A long, awkward moment. “I uh, gotta go. Dinner. You, uh. Take it sleazy.”

Why.  _ Why,  _ Alex _.  _

“Of course,” Tahan says gravely, looking down at the catch of the day. “I’m going to take this... delicious bounty to Clint’s incinerator.”

“Good idea.”

“You take it sleazy, as well,” Tahan says. “My best to Evelyn and um, Sir.”

Alex waves vaguely to indicate that he will, and gets the hell out of there.

  
  


<><><>

It’s all Dusty’s fault, really.

It’s a few days after their weirdly friendly talk on the bridge, in the evening. It’s getting chilly as the sun sets (the spring breeze at night can be bitter), but Alex has his jacket hanging on the fence while he rolls around in Dusty’s pen, the dog barking and wiggling in doggy adoration. Dusty needs a bath, which means Alex does too. 

“Good boy, who’s the best damn boy, you ugly mutt, was there ever an uglier mutt than you?” Alex says while Dusty, who’s used to Alex taking unfair advantage of the fact that he is  _ slightly  _ better at English than the dog, answers every question with the traditional  _ yesyesyes, and  _ **_I LOVE YOU!_ **

Dusty gets his all-but-toothless mouth around Alex’s arm and pretends to snarl. Even when Alex was little, Dusty’d never put a scratch on him. Dusty had been  _ his  _ from the moment Alex’s mom put a puppy in his arms, always standing between Alex and a scary world. Dogs couldn’t pretend to love you. They couldn’t pretend anything. Really bad liars, dogs. 

Dusty’s almost thirteen now, and his muzzle is mostly grey. One of his eyes is getting kind of milky, and from the way he tilts his head, Alex thinks he probably can’t see out of it well. 

“You’re my good boy,” Alex says, mouth suddenly dry, and he gathers the dog to him, trying to ignore the way the knobs in his back stick out, and the patchy fur on his haunches. “Twenty more years, huh? That’s not too much to ask, right?”

Dusty thinks it’s a good idea, wagging his bent-in-four-places tail, but he thinks everything is a good idea. He’s a dog. 

“Shit,” Alex says, clenching his jaw hard, vision going blurry. Damn it,  _ no. _

“Alex?” 

For the record, Alex isn’t sure he believes in Yoba. If there was a big all-powerful Dad in the sky, tossing miracles and thunderbolts around, would the world be like this? But at times like these, wiping salty water (tears, you chickenshit crybaby, they’re called  _ tears _ ) out of his eyes, Alex knows in his soul that Yoba is real. He is real, He is watching, and He hates the frigging  _ pants _ off Alex Christopher Mulner. 

There’s Tahan, leaning up against the fence,  _ of course.  _ He’s got a concerned look on his face that makes Alex sick to his stomach.

_ Stupid, weak little piece of shit,  _ **_I’ll_ ** _ give you something to cry about-- _

“Yeah?” Alex says, voice not exactly welcoming.

“Are you al--”

“I’m  _ fine,  _ goddamn it,” Alex snaps, and Tahan physically recoils. There’s no other word for it. Shock flashes across his face for a split second before he clamps down, hard, on his expression. Totally blank, giving nothing away.

Just like--

“Ah shit, I’m sorry, dude,” Alex says, scratching the base of Dusty’s tail--securing his nomination for Best Person in the Whole Entire Universe for the millionth time, based on the dog’s reaction. “I’m just--”

“No need,” Tahan says, holding up a hand. “I shouldn’t have--”

Taking the blame, because it’s easier if it’s his fault, just like--

“Naw. You didn’t deserve that.” Alex says. “Just--friggin’ accept my apology. You’re giving me a headache.”

“Then I accept,” Tahan says, with a relieved smile. “This is your dog?”

“This is Dusty, man’s best friend. This man’s best friend, anyhow,” Alex can’t resist. “Wanna say hello?” 

Tahan is his usual pristine self, so Alex is surprised when he comes around and goes through the gate. Dusty does his signature move--attempt to run toward the new human, tackle to the ground, dominate and destroy with slobbery dog kisses--but when Tahan makes a brisk whistle through his front teeth, Dusty stops dead, like he hit a wall. He looks at Tahan, then at Alex, clearly confused, like he is by anything more complicated than a hamburger.

Then he abruptly sits, back legs flat, spine straighter than it’s ever been. Dusty’s usual shape is like a potato or a worn-out sofa cushion with a tail; right now he looks like a dog. Like a  _ hound. _

Tahan makes another whistle, this one going up at the end. Dusty extends a paw, which Tahan shakes, seriously, like he’s congratulating Dusty on his promotion to senior vice president.

“Good boy,” Tahan says, scratching his ears. At another whistle, Dusty lies down, looking up at Tahan like someone seeing the Face of Yoba.

“What the  _ hell,” _ Alex says. “How--”

“Oh,” Tahan says, smiling brightly. “I attended a four week seminar on dog training and dressage. It was quite fascinating.  _ Franz Guttenburg von Hammerstein _ was one of the speakers.”

Tahan sits, cross legged in the dirt. Somehow it’s not the most astonishing thing Alex has seen today, because he’s also a friggin’  _ dog wizard. _

“I… what… who?”

“The Lord of the Hounds? Master of the Three Hundred Breeds?” Tahan says, clearly trying to be helpful, but he might as well be speaking Gotoro for all it helps. 

“And that gave you… dog powers?” Alex asks weakly. 

“I’m an amateur at best,” Tahan says modestly. “What’s his breed?”

“Dusty is one third labrador, one third pit bull, one third garbage can, and one third stegosaurus,” Alex says proudly. 

“A noble beast.”

“The most noblest.”

“We should commission him a tapestry,” Tahan says. “Or perhaps his likeness in bronze. You’ve had him awhile, I take it?”

Alex scratches Dusty’s butt; Tahan his ears. Dusty has died and gone to doggy heaven. For some reason--watching Dusty do his best to lick a holes in the knees of Tahan’s impractically tight trousers, which Tahan somehow doesn’t seem to mind--it seems like… it might be okay to talk.

“I’ve had him for a long time,” Alex says. “A really long time. Since--before.”

“Before?” Tahan asks. He sounds only mildly curious, but his eyes are very… intent, on Alex. Alex focuses on the dog. Much safer. 

“You--maybe you wondered. Why I live with my grandparents.” Alex’s mouth is really dry.

“Mm,” Tahan says. “They’re lovely people, but yes. I’ll admit I did wonder.”

“My mom… died. When I was little.” Alex hesitates. “And my dad… wasn’t great.”

“Ah. I know… something about that,” Tahan says slowly. 

“He’d… drink. And he’d, he’d say… shit, about me.”

“I know something about that as well,” Tahan admits quietly. 

“I love Grandma and Grandpa, but they weren’t there, they didn’t  _ see it. _ My mom was too sick to, to, to stop it, to help me, I was so  _ stupid,  _ and I had to be strong for  _ her, _ and--” 

Tahan makes an involuntary little noise and starts to reach for Alex, but then breaks off. Alex looks down to realize that he’s clenched one hand hard enough to leave dark purple gouges with his bitten-down nails. He manages to open it, but it’s harder than it should be.

“You weren’t stupid, you were a  _ child,” _ Tahan says fiercely.

Alex shakes his head. He knows the score. 

“Dusty was there,” Alex says. “He was there for it, so I don’t have to explain anything to him.” Dusty, as always, senses his distress, and abandons Tahan without hesitation to throw himself on Alex like a big furry blanket. Like a teddy bear, if teddy bears had fangs and weird lumpy bodies and somehow always smelled like old soup no matter how often they were washed. Alex hugs him tight. 

_ Stupid crybaby little bastard, you better be worth it, she’s never been right since you were born, you killed your mother you worthless stupid ugly piece of-- _

Dusty was there, but Dusty is  _ old,  _ and--

Tahan reaches out and grabs Alex’s wrist. For a skinny guy, he’s got a hell of a grip. Must be all that farm work. 

“Forget the…  _ shit _ he said about you. That’s not you. You’re better than that.”

“But he was my dad,” Alex says. “He’d oughta know, right?”

_ “No. _ And we’re not all equally blessed in the dad department,” Tahan says. “Mine can go straight to Hell. And I’d buy yours a first class ticket in the seat right next to him.”

The moment crawls on. Tahan’s hand is solid and warm. Not sweaty, like Alex’s are right now. Alex draws a deep, shuddering breath.

“Tahan…”

Tahan grins, unexpectedly. “Ha.”

“...Ha what?”

“You know my name,” Tahan says. He lets go of Alex’s wrist and does some kind of…  _ victory shimmy  _ that makes Alex wish he had one of those bean bag cannons cops use during riots. 

“Damn it,” Alex moans. “No, no. I was so careful. Crap. Slip of the tongue.”

“Sorry,  _ dude,” _ Tahan says, standing. “Too bad,  _ bro. _ You know what this means? It means… we’re  _ acquaintances.”  _

Tahan makes  _ ooooooooh spooooooky  _ fingers, because he is a  _ gigantic dweeb _ . He gives Alex a hand up off the ground, again, unexpectedly strong. Alex frees his arm as quickly as possible and feels it hang at his side like an awkward crab. 

“Now come,” Tahan says. “I’m going to buy you a beer.”

“Gross,” Alex says. 

“Ah, right. Now come,” Tahan says again. “I’m going to buy you a root-beer float.” 

“Why, bro… oh, fine.  _ Tahan.” _

“Victory is sweet. Like vanilla ice cream, in a sea of the  _ rooted beer,” _ Tahan says dreamily. “Because we are acquaintances now. Acquaintances for life. With a numeric four, and a syntactically incoherent ‘y’ instead of an ‘i’.”

“You’re a frigging dork.”

“Quite.”

“Fine,” Alex says. “But if you order one with two spoons, I’m out of there.”

“I would never dream of it.  _ Bro.” _

“Hey, look, Tahan--” 

Tahan pauses, hand on the Stardrop’s greasy door handle. 

“Yes?” 

“Listen, don’t--I mean, don’t let it get around--”

“Alex, my  _ dude,” _ Tahan says, and damn it, Alex can  _ hear _ the italics. “We discussed our emotions for thirty seconds. We’re men. That means we’re going to eat ice cream, say goodnight.” He grins hugely. “And  _ never, ever talk about this again.” _

Alex thinks it over. “Cool.”

Tahan holds the door for him with a flourish and a little bow. Alex rolls his eyes and lets him. 

<><><>

It ends up being… nice. Tahan orders a float for each of them, thank Yoba, and seems comfortable talking about Dogs We Have Known. He tries to explain Guttertramp von Schlubbywhatzit’s twenty-eight point theory of canine obedience, with zero success; he promises to send Alex some reference materials. 

Oh goody.

But it’s… it’s just  _ nice. _ There’s probably other words for it but it’s not like Alex is gonna crack open a thesaurus. 

“Well, I’ve got an early morning,  _ dude,” _ Tahan says, beckoning for the check. “I should really be going,  _ chum.” _

“Sorry to hear that,  _ man.” _

“Me too,  _ buddy.”  _ Tahan gives him another one of those weirdly demented little grins. 

Tahan pays Gus and gives Alex a friendly poke in the sternum (really hard,  _ ow _ ) and starts to leave. 

“Hey, Tahan!”

Tahan pauses halfway to the door.

“Caught any fish yet?”

Tahan considers this for a moment, and then, to Alex’s secret delight, flips him off.

Abigail, Sebastian and Sam are coming in as Tahan’s going out, and Alex gives them a wave. Before the door shuts behind them, Alex can hear Dusty’s bark of doggy ecstasy and Tahan’s whistle of command.

“Hey Alex?” Sam says, sitting down in Tahan’s spot. “We’re gonna play some pool? Wanna join us?” 

“Fine,” Alex says. “Don’t get shitty when I kick your ass, though.” 

“Funny you should mention it,” Abigail says sweetly, fluttering her long purple lashes in a way that fools absolutely nobody. Like mascara on a cobra. “Because you owe us a round of pizza from last time. From your  _ bloody, humiliating defeat.” _

Damn that woman and her long memory. “Fine. Gus--four slices of pepperoni.” Gus nods, making an OK with one hand. “And I hope it tastes good, because I’m gonna  _ destroy  _ you.”

“Just cheese for me, Gus? I’ve been feeling a little urpy the last few days?” Sam says.

“Maybe something you drank,” Alex says, deadpan. He wonders exactly how many river sodas Sam drinks in a week.

They head over to the pool table, Abigail grabbing the cues while Sebastian sets up the balls. Sebastian and Abigail always go first, because Sam is useless, and Alex mainly focuses on not being total crap at pool. They pretend to wager on the outcome, like they do every week, as if anyone ever beats Abigail.

“Soooooo,” Sam begins as Sebastian lines up the opening shot. “Saw you were talking with the new guy? Lord Fancy-Ass?”

“Tahan,” Alex says stiffly. “Nice guy.”

“Oh yeah,” Abigail says. “He was in Dad’s shop the other day. Smells nice.”

“Haven’t met him,” Sebastian says, like this is surprising. Sebastian emerges from his basement twice a week, maximum, and only because Dr. Harvey won’t give him vitamin D shots anymore. 

“Yeah but  _ Alex _ was having a drink with him. Was it a daaaaaaa--” 

Alex is about to club him over the head with a bar stool, but Sam’s attempt at Suicide-by-Alex ends in an  _ oomph _ as Abigail elbows him in the stomach, at the same time that Sebastian’s pool cue catches him right in the diaphragm. Alex suspects at least one of them is telepathic.

“I’m just saying--” Sam says, getting his wind back with unfair speed. 

“How about you  _ don’t,” _ Alex snaps. 

“I--”

“Sam,” Sebastian cuts in warningly. “Pick your battles.” With the subtext, that goes completely over Sam’s head, of,  _ You utter dumbass. _

“He’s a good guy,” Alex says again, confrontationally, as though daring one of them to pick up a pool cue and fight him about it. “I like him.” 

Sam opens his mouth, but before he can once again beg for death from Alex’s righteous fists of justice, Sebastian pegs him in the face with the grossest of the couch cushions. The one dubbed Abigail dubbed Ol’ Spermy, way back in freshman year. 

“Blaugh! Not cool! Why’d you do that!” Sam says, flinging the pillow away from him. Not that it matters; nowhere in Stardew Valley is far enough to save you from the pungent touch of Ol’ Spermy. 

“I just  _ saved your life,” _ Sebastian says, which is, y’know, accurate. 

It’s good to have friends, Alex thinks to himself as Sam tries to duck behind the counter for a brillo pad to scrub his face. Friends to watch your back. To help you avoid a prison sentence. Not that any jury in the world would consider permanently shutting up Sam Peterson a crime, but still--they were good to have around. 

Acquaintances, too. 


	3. Bow Before the Fish Master; Or, How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love the Evil Multinational Conglomerate

It’s a stormy summer morning and Alex is barely dressed when he hears someone’s frantic, unsteady knocking on the door. It’s not even eight AM; his mousse is barely dry. 

“Would you get that, dear?” Grandma calls, watering the plants on the kitchen windowsill.

“What is it, robbers?” Grandpa yells from the living room, almost drowned out by the gunshots and horse screams of one of his cowboy movies ( _ The Man Who Spoke Gun IV: Desperate Desperados, _ Alex can tell from the children’s choir singing in the background).

“I’m going, I’m going,” Alex says, heading for the door.

“You’re a love,” says Grandma.

“Let’s see some hustle,” Grandpa yells. “You’re the one with working legs.”

Alex isn’t even remotely surprised to open the door to find Tahan. But… not Tahan like he’s used to seeing him. A sopping wet Tahan (it’s raining cats and dogs out there), beaming at him like a bedraggled lunatic who just got dragged through a hedge. There are branches in his hair; one cuff on his soaked-to-the-skin shirt is torn. Moreover, he’s carrying a huge burlap sack with the triumphant air of a man who just won a Golden Gridball Cup.

“Um, hi, Tahan,” Alex says. 

“I did it!” Tahan says, grinning from ear to ear, showing more teeth than Dusty does to the vacuum cleaner. He shoves the reeking bag at Alex, who isn’t prepared and nearly stumbles from the weight. 

“What--is there, like, a corpse in here? Is it Sam? Because my birthday isn’t till summer, bro.”

“Don’t be silly,  _ compadre,” _ Tahan says. “It’s fish. Fish! You’d better call Ferngill Fish and Wildlife, because I caught  _ all of the fish. _ There’s no more fish. None left in the world. Fish are extinct, because I am  _ the Fish Master.” _

Alex wonders if Tahan is using one of those rich-guy party drugs. He maneuvers the heavy-ass sack to the kitchen counter, where Grandma bustles over to take a look as he opens it up.

Carp.

Carp upon carp. (Carps upon carps?) Some of them are still twitching; one of them makes eye contact with Alex, making angry little nom-nom-noms with its mouth, an accusatory look in its fishy little eyes. One that has a little more fight than the others manages to flop weakly to the floor. Tahan bends down to retrieve it, and through his shirt (white, and so wet and sheer he might as well not be wearing it) Alex can’t help but notice the long, surprisingly pronounced muscles in his back. There might be something to this farming thing after all. 

“Behold my bounty,” Tahan says grandly, before he pauses, then sneezes with bone-cracking force. “Oh. Excuse me.”

“Um,” Alex says, trying to find something nice to say. “They’re certainly, um. Fresh.” 

“Well,” Tahan says, sneezing again. “I should be going. I’m gonna go catch more!” 

He turns, but Grandma has snuck up behind him and looks  _ Stern. _

“You will do no such thing, young man,” Grandma says, and Tahan--who has to be nearly double her height--immediately looks cowed. “Alex, help him out of those wet clothes before he catches his death. Where is your  _ raincoat, _ you silly goose?” 

Somehow, Grandma makes  _ silly goose _ fill in for any number of swear words. Alex sympathizes; Grandma can peel paint with her  _ sweetheart. _

“Um, in Fern Maximal?” Tahan says weakly. 

So Tahan’s not just a city kid; he lived in the  _ capital. _ That’s when Alex notices that Tahan’s eyes are probably a little  _ too _ bright, and he’s not gleeful, he’s jittery. 

“You can borrow one of George’s,” Grandma says firmly. “But not until you get warmed up. Your grandfather would haunt me to the next world if I let you catch your death out there.”

“You--you knew my grandfather?” Tahan asks with sudden interest. Grandma sternly points towards Alex’s room. Tahan all but salutes.

<><><>

Alex digs around in his drawers, trying to find something Tahan can wear while his clothes are drying. Buried in the back of one of his drawers are a pair of shorts he wore when he was about twelve. Perfect. And a white t-shirt that shrank and got kind of grey in the wash. That’d do. He piles them atop a clean towel on the end of his bed. 

He turns to find Tahan peering at his bookshelf. 

“Hey,” Alex says. “Come on now. Focus up.”

“You like to read?” Tahan asks.

“I, uh,” Alex says. “Haven’t read any of them. Long story. Now come on, man. Get changed before Grandma really gets mad.”

Tahan shudders. “Perish the thought. I felt like a rat being stalked by a sweet, elderly cobra.” 

“That’s Grandma, alright,” Alex says, absently watching Tahan unbutton his shirt. 

There’s not an ounce of extra weight on him anywhere--does he ever, like, eat?--and it turns out his shoulders aren’t as skinny as when he’s dressed and doing his  _ please-don’t-hurt-me _ schtick. Alex mentally upgrades him from  _ helpless kitten, missing limbs  _ to  _ eight-year-old with asthma _ on the Toughness Scale.

“Um, Alex.” 

“Yeah?” Alex says. Man, it’s not fair, Tahan probably doesn’t even have to work for that hip groove like Alex does. Skinny guys have all the luck.

Tahan’s hands are on his belt buckle. “Perhaps you could, ah, turn around?” 

“Oh. Right,” Alex says, shaking his head. Not like he hasn’t spent enough time in the locker room, but whatever, Tahan’s shy, big surprise. He turns around.

“May I ask about the bookshelf?” Tahan says.

Alex hears the sound of his pants unzipping, twitches a little at the sound of them hitting the floor a moment later. Tahan’s jumpiness must be contagious. 

“Look, it’s like…” Alex begins, before he stops and shakes his head. “Every once in a while I get this idea in my head that I’m not, like--”  _ stupid _ , “--bad at… book stuff,” Alex says. “So I’ll buy a couple books, and then…”

Tahan’s using the towel, Alex can tell from the sound of terrycloth rubbing over bare skin. 

“And then what?”

“And then I don’t read them,” Alex says, lamely. Every time he feels like it's gonna be different, and every time the words won’t sit still, and just thinking about it gives him a migraine. “I’m crap at it, I’ll always be crap at it. I just forget that sometimes.”

“I shouldn’t think--”

“Look, it’s fine,” Alex says. “It’s just, you know, I gave up on book smarts a long time ago. Thankfully I’m so goddamn good looking,” Alex says, trying to lighten the moment. 

“Um,” Tahan says, with a little cough. “I, ah. No comment. But I don’t think you should give up. You seem like a perfectly intelligent person to me.”

“Tell that to my report cards.” Or every teacher he’s ever had. Or his dad.

“We all have our strengths and weaknesses,” Tahan says. “You can turn around now, by the way.” 

“Your modesty is safe with me,” Alex says, and then winces. There’s about fifteen miles of Tahan’s skinny brown legs sticking out of the bottom of the shorts, and they’re a bit, um,  _ well defined. _ “Sort of. Tell you what, let’s get you a bathrobe.” 

“Alright,” Tahan says agreeable, waggling his eyebrows and one of his gigantic feet. “Although I rather like the look. Maybe it will catch on.”

“You walk outside like that, you’ll get arrested,” Alex says, rummaging in his closet and coming back with his old bathrobe.

“The things we do for fashion,” Tahan says, making a tragic face. He grins as Alex wads up the robe and chucks it at his face, hard. 

“Thank you,” Tahan says. “It seems like you spend half your time coming to my rescue, these days.” 

“Don’t mention it,” Alex says. “Seriously, I’ve--”

“Got a reputation to maintain, yes, yes,” Tahan says, shrugging himself into the robe. “Alex, from what I’ve seen, you’re neither a stupid person nor an unkind one. I wish you wouldn’t--think that way, about yourself.” 

“What’s it to you?” Alex asks, crossing his arms. 

“You’re my friend,” Tahan says. “I shouldn’t think you’d like to hear me speak that way about one of  _ your  _ friends, after all.”

“We’re acquaintances, remember?” Alex says, not meeting Tahan’s eyes. “Get that through your head.”

“Ah,” Tahan says, smiling slightly. “Of course, I forget. But--still.”

_ “Dude.” _

“I’ll drop it,” Tahan says. “It’s just--I’ve spent a lot of time giving myself absolutely no credit, having no faith in myself and… I don’t know. I’ve found I can do things I never dreamed I could. Catch fish, for instance,” Tahan’s gaze turns pensive. “Forge metal. Keep bees. Make a fr… acquaintance,” Tahan finishes hastily as Alex turns and glowers at him. 

“Maybe you’re lucky that way,” Alex says, clenching his jaw. Who does Tahan think he is, anyway?

“Maybe,” Tahan says. “I hope you’ll get lucky, too.”

Alex stares.

“I… regret that phrasing,” Tahan says, turning that eggplant color again.

“I would  _ friggin hope so.”  _

Praise Yoba, Grandma picks that moment to call them back into the kitchen. Tahan keeps his eyes on the floor, Alex anywhere except Tahan.

Though he does look  _ hilarious _ in Grandma’s fuzzy pink shower slippers. 

<><><>

Tahan, sitting cross-legged on the floor next to Alex, leans over to whisper in Alex’s ear. 

“Er…  _ how  _ many of these movies did you say there were?” 

“Fifteen,” Alex says.

He leans his head back against the seat of one of the living room chairs--they’ve been in the living room since Grandma and Grandpa first moved to Pelican Town, i.e. fifteen minutes after the Big Bang, and Alex had learned early that they were much more comfortable to lean against than sit in, unless it was hot and the plastic covers got all sticky. 

“For a man who speaks gun, he certainly has a lot to say,” Tahan says, sipping from the kettledrum-sized mug of hot cocoa Grandma had sternly instructed him to drink. Alex has his own (mostly marshmallows; eight year old Alex had been all about them, and Grandma remembers) balanced on his knee.

“More like one thing, over and over,” Alex says. He’s not as big a fan of the cowboy flicks as he is of the creature features--his favorite,  _ It Came From Planet Woman, _ was the first movie he and Grandpa had ever watched together--but the cowboy movies were Grandpa’s favorite. They played in a more-or-less nonstop loop on one of the cheapo channels

“Imma kill you dead, you sonofabitch!” says Rigg Cartwright, the Man Who Spoke, Thought, and Probably Slept With His Gun, firing his six-shooter into a crowd of hapless mooks fifteen times (Alex counts) without reloading. The rancher’s daughter, bound but unfortunately not gagged, gives a falsetto shriek of terror, showing a few inches of leg. Alex supposes you’re not supposed to comment on the four inches of pancake makeup she’s wearing in the close shots, to make a woman of thirty-four look sixteen.

“Racy,” Tahan murmurs.

“Don’t get too excited, she loves Yoba more than she loves any man,” Alex says, pointing his eyes piously skyward. 

“Aw, shucks.”

“Boys,” Grandpa says, craning his head, turtlelike, at Alex. “If you don’t mind, I am trying to watch.” 

“Sorry, sir,” Tahan says, smiling into his mug. 

“You don’t have to be sorry, just button your goddamn yap.” 

It weirds Alex out that Tahan knows enough not to take Grandpa seriously, just makes an elaborate mime of locking his mouth and throwing away the key in response to Grandpa’s black scowl. Same as how he knows to nod meekly and say  _ yes, Evelyn _ to Grandma when she’s being bossy. 

“Thirty-seven,” Tahan whispers at the end of the gunfight (so much for the lock and key). His hair, without the fwoofy product, nearly reaches his shoulders, though a bunch of it on the sides is shaved to black stubble. Who needs a haircut that fancy, anyhow? 

“Huh?”

“Shots he fired without reloading.”

It was actually only thirty-five, but Alex gives him credit for trying. 

<><><>

Lunch that day is carp sandwiches, fried crispy. Grandma can make anything taste good. Tahan, in freshly laundered clothes, joins them, and hangs onto Grandma’s every word as she tells him stories about his grandfather. Grandpa even chimes in from the living room with a detail or two--they’d served together during one of the dust-ups with the Gotoro Empire, forty years back. Tahan could clearly eat the words up with a spoon.

He leaves after lunch, lost in the folds of Grandpa’s raincoat--Grandpa had been a big, broad-shouldered brick of a man, back in the day--with an ominous promise to bring more fish. Dinner is herbed carp fillets over potatoes--again, delicious.

Breakfast that morning is cold carp sandwiches. Lunch too. Dinner the following evening proves to be carp over rice, until Alex stages a revolt in the night and steals the remaining eight hundred pounds from the fridge and dumps it in the river. He’s heard there’s mutant carp in the city’s water; maybe they’ll eat it.

Grandma tuts about the waste, but Alex knows she’s relieved.

<><><>

One sunny afternoon a few days later, Alex is sitting in his front yard, leaning against the old tree--if you look up, you can still see a few rotten boards from his old treehouse, nailed here and there--and listening to music. Dusty is a pile of half-melted dog on his lap, when (of course) Tahan rolls up, with a burlap sack over one shoulder and that irritating Dusty-like grin on his face. He’s got way more teeth than Dusty, but the feeling is the same. 

“Alex!” Tahan says. “Good afternoon.”

“Hey, you,” Alex says, and catches Tahan’s smirk in response. “Where you off to?”

“Geodes,” Tahan says, shaking the sack, which, holy shit, is it filled with  _ rocks? _ Alex mentally ticks him upward from  _ eight-year-old-with-asthma  _ all the way to  _ thirteen-year-old (still with asthma) _ . “Clint says he’ll break them open for me. Care to join me?” 

“Only if Dusty can come,” Alex says, standing with a stretch. 

“Dusty, the Prince of Canines?” Tahan says. “Dusty may go where he wills.” 

Dusty has rolled over on his back to show his belly to Tahan, worship in his eyes. Tahan does that whistle thing and Dusty rolls over and points.

“Good boy,” Tahan says. “Shall we?”

“Your dog powers freak me out,” Alex says. “Do they work on other animals? Can you summon bees?”

“Yes,” Tahan says gravely. “They communicate through dance, you know. A language in which I am fluent,” he says, waving his free arm and shaking his nonexistent hips in a kind of belly dancerish manner. 

“I’m sure the bees will be here any minute,” Alex says, forcing himself not to laugh. 

“They will,” Tahan says. “They know not to disappoint their king.”

They walk in silence for a few minutes, listening to the birds. Alex eyes the sack--there’s gotta be at least sixty, seventy pounds of rock in there, and Tahan’s stooped a little under the weight, but he’s not even sweating. 

“Oh, by the way, thanks  _ so much _ for the carp, but if you bring any more to my house, I’m gonna kill you and bury you in my backyard.” Dusty rushes ahead of them, sniffing and peeing on every post on the bridge. Ah, dogs.

“Bit much, was it?” 

“Oh. Yeah. A bit,” Alex says. “You could have fed half of Zuzu City with that mess.”

“You’re a growing boy, you need your protein.” Tahan says easily. 

“You’re one to talk,” Alex says.

“Jealousy is very unbecoming,” Tahan says. “Just because you envy my world-class physique,  _ Alexander, _ that’s no reason to be this way--”

Alex tries to shove him in the river, but Tahan just grins and uses his free hand to fend him off, and since Tahan’s arms are about ten feet long, it works. Dusty, not understanding the situation but very happy about it anyway, capers around them, barking and soaking the cobblestones in drool. 

“Frigging beanpole,” Alex grumbles. 

“Now now, I’m only five foot eighteen,” Tahan says. “There’s many ways the short can still be contributing members of society. For example, many musical theater productions hire dwarves for the chorus.”

“I’m  _ tall.” _

“Of course you are, that’s the spirit,” Tahan says sweetly, reaching over and patting him on the head. Alex tries to push him in the river again, unsuccessfully. 

Dusty seems torn, watching a struggle between his master and his god. Frigging dogs. 

“Well hello, gentlemen!” 

Tahan stiffens, and the sack hits the ground with a thud. His whole body is suddenly tense, like the giant steel cables on the Zuzu City bridge.

Alex turns. It’s the guy from Joja-Mart--what’s his face, Morris--walking towards them on the bridge, a stack of flyers in his hand.

(“I don’t like that Morris guy,” Abigail had said over pool a few days earlier. With one impossible twist of her wrist, she sank two balls and nudged one more into alignment. “Skeevy. He’s got that look, you know.”

“What look?” Sam asked, between loud slurps of a chocolate milkshake.

“That smug look, like he’s got an invisible woman sucking his cock, twenty-four seven,” Abigail said.

“Ha ha, gross?” Sam said.

“Not just  _ a _ woman,” Sebastian said, standing and stretching for his turn. “She’s like… a nun. And he’s already decided to foreclose on her orphanage.”

“You guys are weirdos,” Alex said. Though he’s never trusted a bow tie…)

“Hey man,” Alex says. Morris flicks his eyes at him briefly, then visibly dismisses him and goes back to staring at Tahan. There’s a hugely creepy, almost…  _ knowing  _ smile on his face, that Alex doesn’t like at all.

“How are you, this fine day?” Morris asks. 

Tahan says nothing, and Alex looks over to see that Tahan’s face is grey with something that looks an awful lot like fear. No, wait--not fear. Anger.

“I was just out and about, talking to the townsfolk about the benefits of a Joja Membership,” Morris says, holding out a flyer to Tahan. “You’re new, right?  _ Tahan, _ isn’t it?”

“It is,” Tahan says, voice high and weirdly clipped. He snatches the flyer out of Morris’ hand and crumples it into a ball. 

“Tahan?” Alex asks uncertainly.

“There’s so much Joja could do for Pelican Town,” Morris says, voice warm and buttery. “Perhaps I could interest you in a Joja… membership. Or are you already a member of the Joja…  _ family?” _

“I  _ very much doubt it,” _ Tahan says, lips white. He’s shaking. 

“A shame,” Morris says. “We’re so close, you know. One more membership and the old community center can be renovated into a storage warehouse. We’ll be able to begin… improving civic infrastructure.”

“Stay out of the community center,” Tahan snarls. Alex puts a hand on his arm, alarmed, but Tahan doesn’t even seem to notice him. “You hear me? You stay out of it, you pusillanimous little toad, or I’ll--"

Tahan breaks off, breathing hard, chest shuddering. 

Morris grins wider, and turns to Alex. “Now, I can start on the paperwork if you’re interested… what did you say your last name was?” Morris pulls a pen out of his breast pocket and clicks it. “Alex… Mulner, right? Is that with one L or two?”

Tahan suddenly shoves himself between them with enough force that Alex finds himself flying backward, hitting the bridge’s railing almost hard enough to send him over the side.  _ “Shit--!” _

Tahan has two handfuls of Morris’ jacket, and Alex sees daylight under the short little man’s feet. He’s not sauve and amused anymore, that’s for sure. His glasses are off kilter and the membership forms are blowing all over the bridge. 

“You stay the  _ fuck _ away from him, you hear!?” Tahan screams, spittle flying, baring his teeth. “You stay away from him, and you stay away from me. I don’t care what you  _ think  _ you know, you son of a bitch, but I could end your entire  _ world _ with a goddamn phone call--”

“Woah, Tahan!” Alex says, putting a hand on his shoulder. Tahan shrugs him off, violently, and Alex finds himself a backing up a step.

_ “Stay out of this,” _ Tahan growls at him, then turns his fury back on Morris. “You can scurry back to your little office and take this as official notice, because I’m going to kick your ass right out of this town.” Tahan shakes him, hard. Morris’ head lolls and his glasses go flying. He looks a few steps past terrified. Finally, Tahan drops him, and he falls flat on his ass, barely catching himself from hitting his head. 

“You will build your warehouse,” Tahan says, face purple with rage,  _ “over my dead body. _ That is a promise.”

Morris scrambles to his feet and scurries away, looking fearfully over his shoulder. With Morris gone, Tahan slumps heavily against a bridge post, like a puppet with its strings cut, and slides to the ground. He buries his face in his hands, shoulders shuddering.

“Tahan,  _ what the hell was that?”  _ Alex asks, palms up, staying back and making no sudden moves, like Tahan is a rattlesnake he’s trying not to spook.

“Alex,” Tahan says, raising his head. His eyes are red; he’s crying. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have shoved you, that’s… or shouted. I’m _ so sorry, _ please--”

Alex waves it away. “I play gridball, dude, I’ve taken harder hits than that coaching the peewee leagues. What the hell was up with you and that Morris guy?”

“Alex... do you know what Joja does to towns like yours?” Tahan says slowly. “There’s a step-by-step process, all laid out at central headquarters. First, they get a foothold. They drive all the other businesses out, then once that happens…” Tahan shakes his head. “They start driving the prices up. Soon, Joja’s the only employer in town. Joja  _ is _ the town. You think Shane gets paid? Half his salary is JojaMart scrip.” 

“How do you…?”

“I…” Tahan says, looking away. “I worked for them. For a long time. You think the rivers are bad now? Wait till there’s a bottling plant upstream. Wait till Lewis gets voted out, and there’s a Joja-approved mayor. They’ll shitcan Penny and bring in someone with a Joja curriculum. The air will burn and the birds will die, Alex. They’ll cut down all the trees, they’ll pave all the roads. It’ll be a goddamn subsidiary of Joja Multinational Incorporated, and the only thing left of Pelican Town will be the name. It’s what they  _ do,  _ and they do it everywhere, and, and--”

Alex sits down next to him and grips his shoulder, hard. It seems to help, because Tahan draws in a shuddering breath and seems to calm down, a little. 

“They do it everywhere,” Tahan says again. “But they’re not gonna do it here. Alex, I swear to you, I won’t let them do it here.”

“What are you talking about?” Alex says. “Joja’s a frigging cola company.”

“Oh, they are so much more than that.” Tahan gives a hopeless chuckle. “So, so much more. They make the guns, and the cockatiel food, and the asphalt, and the neurotoxic weaponry, and the history textbooks. How many people on the Ferngill Council do you think they own? The only reason their logo isn’t on our national flag is because the shareholders voted the measure down.”

Tahan stands. 

“Alex, I’m very sorry, but Clint is going to have to wait. I am going to go to the Stardrop,” he says, motioning back the way they came, “and I am going to get sauced like a veal marsala.” 

“That won’t help,” Alex says, standing too.

“It never does,” Tahan says, with the bleakest smile Alex has ever seen. “But if at first you don’t succeed…”

<><><>

Alex goes with him. He isn’t sure why; he doesn’t like alcohol, doesn’t like being around people when they’re drunk. Still, he leaves the sack of geodes in his front yard and follows Tahan back to the saloon. Tahan says nothing as they walk, doesn’t acknowledge Alex’s presence at all. 

“What’ll it be, boys?” Gus asks as Tahan stalks up to the counter. 

“Whiskey,” Tahan says curtly, and Gus’ eyebrows raise. “And save yourself some steps, my friend, and leave the bottle.”

“Orange soda,” Alex says, and settles in. He’s a little nervous, actually, about sticking around while Tahan gets drunk--Tahan, who recently revealed his potential for  _ insane berserker fury. _ What if he…? 

But it turns out that Tahan isn’t an angry drunk. He just gets quieter and sadder, putting away his whiskey with the grim focus of someone looking to lose consciousness as quickly as possible. It’s an easy thing to recognize, because Shane is at the other end of the bar, doing the same damn thing.

“I hit you,” Tahan says suddenly, and it’s the first thing he’s said directly to Alex since the bridge. He closes his eyes and rests his forehead on the bar. Which is a really bad idea, because it’s super sticky.

“What?” Alex asks.

“On the bridge,” Tahan says, very precise. He’s not slurring, but Alex can tell he’s pretty wasted from the exaggerated care with which he picks up his shot glass and gulps down another round, barely lifting his head. “I hit you.”

“No, you didn’t.” Like Alex doesn’t know about being hit. 

“I did,” Tahan insists. “I did. Because, because I was angry. Because I’m, I’m a  _ bastard,  _ just like my father, and, and, and--”

“Hey now,” Alex interrupts, putting his hand on Tahan’s shoulder and giving it a squeeze. Tahan goes stiff, and turns to stare at Alex, eyes wide. “What was it you said earlier? Don’t talk about my friend that way.”

Oh sweet yoba, please don’t let those be  _ tears  _ welling up in Tahan’s eyes. Luckily Tahan rallies though, and manages to keep them from spilling.

“Acquaintance,” Tahan corrects him. “Alex, they’re already here. They’re so close to phase two. I have to stop them, but…” 

“Let’s get you home,” Alex says. “Come on, up and at ‘em.” 

Tahan seems to have passed some critical line of drunkenness, because at that, he sort of… collapses, like one of those dancing inflatables when you turn the air pump off. He rests his cheek on the sticky bar and closes his eyes.

“Can’t go home,” Tahan says. “S’ haunted. And m’ very drunk.” 

“Yeah, you are.”

“Gotta stop Joja,” Tahan mumbles.

“You will, buddy.”

“Gotta… feed the apples.” 

“The apples?”

“Magic apples,” Tahan says happily, voice muffled by the bar. “They like to dance.”

Tahan passes out, finally, and begins to snore. 

<><><>

Getting him back to Alex’s house is a chore and a half, since he’s barely conscious. Grandma makes up a bed for him in the living room, though Alex agrees with Grandpa that they could probably stand him up in the closet next to the snow shovels. Alex and Grandma working together manage to get a glass of water into him and leave him in an untidy heap, under the blankets. Grandpa says a few things about Men Who Can’t Hold Their Liquor and wheels himself off to bed.

“Poor boy,” Grandma says. “His grandfather was the same.”

“Drunk?” Alex asks. 

“Fighting uphill battles.” Grandma gives Alex the strangest look. Like she knows something he doesn’t. She rests a hand on his cheek, and gives her apple-doll smile. “It’s good of you to watch out for him.”

“Seems to be my full-time job,” Alex grumbles.

“I think it might be,” Grandma says seriously. “Well I’m off to bed, love. Wake me if there’s any trouble.”

Alex stares after her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Goodnight, dear,” Grandma says, closing the bedroom door behind her. 

“Apples,” Tahan murmurs in his sleep, rolling over. 

“Don’t you start, I never know  _ what  _ the hell you’re talking about,” Alex says, making sure there’s a pitcher of water where Tahan can see it whenever he wakes up.

“Weirdo,” Alex says, nudging Tahan with his foot.

“Magicapples,” Tahan says with a happy sigh.

On that note, Alex decides, it’s time to go to bed. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys, thanks for reading! Now, for the love of God, I've been indoors for almost two months, and the only human contact I've had is with all the gorgeous celebrities I've been catfishing on Instagram. TALK TO ME, PEOPLES, I'M DESPERATE.


	4. Atonement

Tahan has had some hangovers in his life. He’s had hangovers tinged with regret, with ennui, with the satisfaction of a job well done; hell, he’s had  _ ironic,  _ even  _ satirical _ hangovers. He is no stranger to the morning after, nor its sultry cousin, the walk of shame. 

This one, though, this is a punishment straight from Yoba, for sins he cannot recall. That’s the only explanation. His mouth is dry as the Calico Desert, and tastes… well, he knows Alex doesn’t have a cat, so one couldn’t have relieved itself in his mouth, but…

Tahan groans, and opens his eyes a single millimeter. The dim light goes through his eye sockets like a stop-thrust saber. 

“Mornin’, lightweight,” says a voice.

“Gegughhr?” Tahan says.

“You wanna try that again?”

Tahan swallows, trying to find the moisture to dampen his tongue enough to speak, and cracks an eye. “George?” 

Sitting in his wheelchair, television on in the background, is George. Because Tahan is--oh, for  _ shit’s sake _ \--lying in a pile of blankets on his living room floor. 

“That’s me,” George says, with a very familiar smirk. 

It gives Tahan a start--because George looks older than his seventy-odd years, and he’s been crippled for the last twenty, but for a moment, his resemblance to Alex is suddenly startling. Oh god,  _ Alex,  _ what must he think of--

“There’s water right by your head,” George adds. “If you think you can stomach it.” 

Tahan’s hands twist into claws and seize the pitcher of their own volition; he’s just along for the ride. 

“Easy there, tiger, easy,” George says. “You puke all over my floor, you get to explain it to Evelyn.” 

“What does Gus make that whiskey out of, demerol?” Tahan asks, after his stomach decides (after a contentious regional plebiscite)  _ not  _ to vomit up the water all over Evelyn’s pristine floor. 

“It’s got a kick to it,” George says affably. “Man has a talent.” 

“I--George, I am truly mortified.” Tahan squeezes his eyes shut. “I can’t possibly express the, the  _ depths  _ of my--”

“Nothing to apologize for, son,” George says. “We’ve all been there. Why, in my day, I was where you are every Saturday morning, and twice on Sunday.”

“That’s terribly kind of you.” Tahan tries sitting up. It feels like a mistake--like the dumbest thing anyone’s ever done--but he doesn’t die or start bleeding from the ears. “I--don’t suppose you have any aspirin? Perhaps  _ all  _ the aspirin?”

“Try the kitchen cupboards.” George returns his gaze to the TV. “I’m not going to fetch it for you.” 

Tahan manages to get unsteadily to his feet--oh god, blood rushing back to his head, aspirin, aspirin, his kingdom for some aspirin--and wobble towards the kitchen. As he passes George, though, the old man’s hand snakes out surprisingly fast (not that Tahan is setting any land speed records right now) and grabs him by the wrist and, dear Lord, that skinny knotted hand has a crocodile grip. George’s greenish eyes--Alex’s eyes--are hard.

“You’re not… playing games, with my grandson, are you?” George says, staring holes into him. “He’s a sensitive boy, much as he’d deny it. And I won’t have him hurt.”

“Excuse me?” Tahan squeaks. (He hates it, but he can’t hide from it: he squeaks. He squeaks like a little lady mouse in a pretty floral bonnet, pouring chamomile tea.)

“It’s just the two of us, son. I won’t be saying anything to him. He’d spook to the rafters and hit the ground running. But between us…” George gives Tahan’s wrist a squeeze, with no apparent effort but that makes his bones creak like rusty hinges. 

“No games, sir,” Tahan says. Squeaks. Whatever. 

“Good, I’m glad to hear that.” George releases Tahan’s wrist and gives him a big, big smile. “Because I’m in a wheelchair, if you hadn’t noticed. Burying you out in the woods would be a chore.” 

“Message received. I…” Tahan says. “No games. I promise. I’d never. I--”

_ Think I might love him, care about him, really REALLY want to do him, um,  _ **_shit_ ** _ \-- _

“--I wouldn’t. Not ever.”

“Good,” George says. “And get me a can of pop, while you’re up.”

Tahan knows damn well George needs to watch his sugar intake; he also knows George keeps a bird rifle in the umbrella stand next to his chair. He gets George some soda, and debates writing a note for Alex--what would he say, though, and he doesn’t have any stationery--before he manages to walk, not flee, out the front door. 

<><><>

A brief detour by his cabin for a shower takes care of the booze-sweat and the booze-mouth; his fat grey cat, Auberaxis, was apparently unimpressed by the previous night’s cold bed and has left a hairball on his pillow. He feeds the chickens and waters his potatoes, but he needs to talk to someone. 

And he knows who that someone should be. 

He digs around under his bed for one of his hoarded bottles of wine. It’s not one of the nice ones--it’s a plonky red that tastes like turpentine, what his Fern Maximal Academy of the Arts chums would call  _ Vin Artiste. _ Sugary sweet, fifty gilder a bottle, and alcoholic enough to catch on fire. 

The aspirin finally starts to kick in--what was it waiting for, _an elegantly_ _calligraphed invitation_ \--while he’s heading south, towards the forest. The light dazzling off the lake hurts as much as losing a close relative.

Leah opens the door to her cabin at his third knock, and her eyes are flat as she looks him up and down. 

“Oh, you must be the new farmer. I’m Leah,” she says, holding out her hand for the limpest of shakes. _ “It’s so nice to meet you.” _

“Leah…” Tahan says, closing his eyes. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry’s cheap, but not as cheap as your--”

“--I also brought you a bottle of wine.” 

Leah’s eyes flick down to the bottle, and takes in the flaming garbage can on the label. 

“Fine.” She steps aside, holding the door open. “Hurry up, you’re letting the flies in.” 

He walks inside, looking around. “I like your cabin. It’s very…”

Leah purses her lips and blows a wet raspberry. “Oh, shut up, you louse. I don’t know what’s worse, when you ignore me, or when you grovel.” 

“I actually hadn’t started grovelling yet,” Tahan says. “This was just making conversation.” 

“Well, I hope you brought your kneepads, Tahan, because I’m in a mood for some serious contrition.” 

“Fair enough.”

Leah sits, and disgustedly waves her hand at Tahan. “Sit, you overgrown scarecrow, sit.” 

Tahan had met Leah years before, during his disastrous attempt to prove himself as an artist--to himself, his parents, the world, and to a cold and manifestly uncaring god. The two of them had shared a certain outlook, some similarities of background, an apartment (for one and a half  _ terrible  _ weeks), disastrous taste in romantic partners, and an enthusiasm for the gilt-edged trappings of genteel alcoholism. So, like most art school friends, Tahan supposes.

Tahan sits at what is clearly her work table, and flinches when Leah offers him a glass of wine. For one thing, it’s--well, okay, it’s actually 5 pm,  _ how late did he sleep _ \--and for another… no booze. No booze, ever again. This time he means it, unlike the other twenty thousand times he’s made the same promise to an entire pantheon of devils and gods. 

“So,” Leah says, swigging straight from the bottle, her raised eyebrows daring him to say something about it. He lets her see his delicate shudder. “Two months. You’ve been here a full  _ two months,  _ and you never even bothered to come say hello. I thought we were better friends than that.”

“We are,” Tahan insists, staring down at the table. It’s flecked with paint, scarred and scratched--the kind of table he’d daydreamed of having himself someday, before his near-complete lack of artistic talent had manifested itself, two years and several hundred thousand gilder too late. “You’re--yes. Leah, I’m sorry. I didn’t…” Tahan swallows. “I wasn’t expecting anyone who knew me to be here.”

“I’m guessing that was the point?” Leah throws back another mouthful. 

“Yes,” Tahan says, looking away. “And thank you. I’m--very grateful that you haven’t told anyone about my--”

_ “Of course I didn’t,” _ Leah says, scowling. “And I’m just going to ignore that--I’m going to ignore your  _ insulting lack of trust,  _ because you have plied me with wine and I know your shitsucking parents left marks. How dare you, Tahan. I would  _ never.”  _

“Of course, of course you wouldn’t. It’s… it’s been a rough few years.”

“Sad and lonely up in your castle, huh?” Leah rolls her eyes. “All that money, power, and privilege keeping you up at night?”

“That’s not--” 

“I know, idiot,” Leah says. “Like I’m one to talk, my parents own a beach house and keep  _ begging  _ to pay my way through law school. I’m just giving you shit. Which you deserve--did I already mention, you’re a louse?”

“Yes.”

“Bears repeating. You louse.” 

“Alright,” Tahan says, standing, and going for his belt buckle. “Let’s get this over with. Do I leave my boxers on, or bare buttocks?” 

“Tahan, I don’t swing that way.  _ You _ don’t swing that way.”

“Over the knee, or should I brace myself against the table?” Tahan says, undoing his belt. “Barehand, or switch?”

“Tahan, if you take off your pants in here, I swear to Yoba--”

“I’m hardly going to let you spank me  _ through  _ them,” Tahan says, faux outraged. “You’ll wear out the seat. I know you shop in thrift store dumpsters, so this is a foreign concept to you, but these pants were expensive.”

“Oh for--fine, fine, you’re forgiven, you’re forgiven. Just keep your clothes on, I don’t need to see that.” 

“I’ve posed nude for you, if you’ll recall.”

“That is _ quite different.” _

“Fine, reject my heroic physique.” Tahan sighs, as he buckles his belt and sits down. His head is very happy with this decision. The sitting down, that is

“It is completely rejected. Besides, I’ve got my eyes on the sweet piece with the purple hair, and I don’t want you starting any rumors about the two of us.”

“Abigail?” Tahan blinks. Well, Leah’s always had a better feel for these things than him. 

“Yes,” Leah says. Then she eyes him narrowly. “So, in the olden days, you only ever came to me when you were embroiled in one of your tragicomic starry-eyed-for-the-straight-boy romances.” 

“Um.”

“Oh god,  _ you are,” _ Leah groans. “Okay, so which strapping, low-browed exemplar of heterosexuality are you hanging your hat on this week?”

“I wouldn’t characterize them as--”

“Oh like Kevin, the rugby player, the one who nearly died when he drank rubbing alcohol--” 

“He had a beautiful spirit!”

“What about Paolo, the one you roomed with--”

“The dreamiest eyes,” Tahan sighs. “He and his wife sent me a holiday card last year. He’s still hot.” 

“Tahan, I love you, but you’re an idiot. A total, Grade-A idiot.” Leah shakes her head.

“So you’ve mentioned.” 

A time or six, every single conversation they’ve ever had. Tahan supposes he deserves it. 

“So who is it?” Leah asks casually, then immediately freezes. “Oh wait. Oh Yoba, please, tell me it’s not--”

He’s barely even admitted this to  _ himself,  _ but…

“Alex,” Tahan admits, then bows his head and waits for her scorn. 

Leah, of course, doesn’t disappoint.

“Alex?” she scoffs. “Alex? The--the  _ wannabe gridball player? _ The one who traded all his spare brains for hair gel? The one who brags about how he has a  _ nine pack?”  _

“Yes, that’s him,” Tahan mumbles. 

Oh god, those abs. He’s caught a few glimpses of them--Alex seems allergic to shirts--and while he hasn’t counted  _ nine… _

“The first time I met him, he said I’d be ‘kinda pretty without the dude haircut’,” Leah says flatly. “Gods, this is worse than I thought. At least the rugby dipshit was  _ nice.” _

“Alex is nice,” Tahan insists, picking at a fleck of paint on the table. “He’s just--defensive. I don’t think he comes off well on a first impression. But he’s, he’s nice to me.”

Well, no, actually he isn’t. He isn’t nice, but he’s…  _ kind. _ A hand on the shoulder, eyes surprisingly intent on his. Alex is...  _ good to him. _ Tahan grew up rich;  _ nice _ is the cheapest commodity out there. Everyone’s  _ nice  _ to you when you’re rich, powerful and well connected--or when your father is, at any rate. People trip over themselves for the chance to be  _ nice. _ Giving in the hopes of getting.

While Alex has never asked him for anything. 

Sometimes Tahan wonders if that’s what he’s been looking for all his life--someone too honest to lie to him about their feelings. Someone who, at the very least, would feel obliged to stab him in the front, not the back. 

“He’s also  _ ten years younger than you, _ you friggin’ cradle robber!”

“He is not!” Tahan protests stoutly. “He’s... eight and a half years younger than me. I asked his grandmother.”

“Oh, well then.” Leah rolls her eyes. “I know it’s traditional when acquiring a  _ child bride, _ Tahan, but negotiations don’t begin with the legal guardians around here. He doesn’t even have a _ dowry.” _

“He’s half my age plus seven--”

“Right, because  _ that’s _ how we should make our romantic decisions. What’s the phrase? ‘If there’s grass on the field--’”

_ “Leah.” _

“You’ve outdone yourself, you really have.”

**_“Leah.”_ **

“It figures, you’d fixate on the dumbest, straightest dude who ever--”

“You’re not exactly lighting the world on fire in the romance department either, Leah,” Tahan snaps, snatching the wine bottle out of her hands and taking a swig. Hair of the dog, why not. “Have you heard from  _ Kel,  _ lately?”

Silence descends. 

“You know,” Leah takes the bottle back, prising Tahan’s fingers off it one by one. “You can be a real c-word sometimes, Tahan.”

“Takes one.”

“True.” Leah signs, leaning back in her rickety chair. “We’re always so mean to each other. Why is that?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Because I’m an idiot, and you’re a bitch?” 

“Also true.” Leah grimaces, and gets up with a stretch, walking over to her kitchenette and grabbing two enormous wine glasses from the little painted cupboard. “Tell you what: truce. Let’s just agree that we both have the worst taste imaginable. In wine, and in love.”

She does two heavy pours of the Dirty Prison Bastard wine, shoving one glass at Tahan. 

“Yes, alas.” Tahan runs his finger along the wine glass until the feedback squeals; Leah shoots him his favorite look, the  _ I-have-a-palette-knife-and-I’m-not-afraid-to-use-it _ look. It brings back fond art school memories, and brings to mind the faint white scar on his forearm.

“So… to Abigail,” Leah says, raising her glass. 

Tahan allots himself so many good karma points by declining to mention that Abigail is four months younger than Alex; oh,  _ so many.  _ Cradle robber indeed. 

“To Abigail,” Tahan agrees gravely. His turn. “And to the straights,” he says, raising his glass again. “May they always be the icebergs to our cruise liners.”

“I’m not toasting to that.” 

Tahan thinks back. To Evelyn’s knowing smile. To George’s grisly threats. To Alex’s eyes on him in his bedroom the day before, for a split second, hungry and searching, a look that Tahan  _ knows _ he didn’t imagine--

“To closet cases,” Tahan raises his glass again. “May we find them where we least expect them; may they succor us when we need them most.”

“Until the day we’re flexible enough to succor ourselves,” Leah says, and clinks her glass with his. 

Tahan spends a moment wondering what Alex is doing at that moment, before the grape-juice-and-formaldehyde taste of the wine drives all thoughts from his mind, much to his profound relief.


	5. Let's See a Man About Some Apples

Tahan is gone by the time Alex and Grandma get back from Pierre’s--which is good, he figures, because Tahan had been sleeping so soundly that if it weren’t for his occasional snores, Alex would have dragged him out to the garbage cans for pickup. 

“Hey gramps,” Alex says as he passes by the old man, heading for the kitchen. “Where’d Tahan run off to?”

“Who knows.” Grandpa flicks idly through a few channels. “We had a nice talk, then he hit the road.” 

_A Nice Talk With Grandpa_ could describe anything from grisly threats to Old Fashioned Opinions; Alex tries not to worry about it too much, tells himself he’s relieved that Tahan is gone.

He puts the groceries away while Grandma bustles here and there, getting dinner started and squabbling with Grandpa in her sweet deceptive way about the empty soda can by his chair. Hopefully Tahan made it home okay. 

“I’m heading over to the farm,” Alex says. “I’ll be home for dinner.” 

“Oh?” Grandma says. “How lovely, dear. Give Tahan my regards.”

“Sure--” 

“--And let me put together a little something for him,” Grandma says, instantly conjuring a pink--aw come on, _pink?_ \--wicker basket. 

<><><>

All in all, it takes Grandma about fifteen minutes to put together a gift basket of fresh-baked bread, cookies, and some of those little leek-and-potato pastries Grandpa loves. She sternly forbids Alex from eating any before she sends him on his way. Tahan’s a nice guy, though, and Alex figures he’d split them with Alex if he asked, so he digs into the cookies as he walks to the farm. Save everyone some time. 

The path to the farm is-- _woah._

Tahan’s been busy. A good half acre of land around the--freshly whitewashed--cabin is clear; just a few weeks ago it had been a forest of saplings and stumps. Now it’s a maze of neatly graveled paths and huge, dark green potato plants. Past the cabin, Alex can see a chicken coop, with five or six fat hens pecking for bugs in the long grass in a wood-and-wire enclosure. 

He finds Tahan by the well, and--blinks a few times. Tahan has his back to Alex; he’s shirtless, wearing a scarred leather apron, and Alex can see the long muscles in his back, slick with sweat, bunch and flex as he hammers on a lump of glowing metal. (And where’d Tahan get an anvil?) In front of him, a jerry-rigged stone forge spits heat and sparks into the air. There’s very little left of the gangling dodo in a dress shirt who nearly killed himself hacking a stump. Hell, there’s Tahan’s axe now, leaning carefully against a fencepost--three times the size of the original, hardened steel, and well used. 

Alex spends a few long moments watching Tahan work. Oh, right, he’s here for a reason. “Hey, Tahan.”

“Oh!” Tahan turns and Alex recoils--he hadn’t realized Tahan was wearing a welding mask. Tahan flips it up; his teeth are very white in his sweaty, soot-smudged face as he grins at Alex. “Hello, Alex. What brings you here?” 

“Oh, I, uh… just wanted to talk. Grandma sent… sorry to interrupt.” Alex watches Tahan douse the metal in a bucket of water; steam goes flying. Tahan’s ropey arms are slick with sweat and steam and… Alex guesses there’s some benefit to blacksmithing, after all. He swallows a few times; his mouth is all dry. “What are you making?”

“Nails,” Tahan says. He pulls off his mask and runs his hands through his sweat-slick hair. “I go through a ton of them, and that bearded bandit Clint charges the moon. And you’re not interrupting, I was just about done for the day.”

“Oh,” Alex says intelligently as Tahan strips off the apron, rolling his shoulders and grimacing a little as he stretches out his right arm.

“Sweaty work,” Tahan says. Alex makes some vague noise of agreement. “Let me get cleaned up and then I’m all yours.” 

Alex sits gingerly on a chair, clearly handmade, on the cabin’s front porch. It creaks and wobbles a little, but takes his weight. He watches Tahan douse himself with a bucket of well water. He wishes he could do the same; it’s very hot here, especially for early spring. The plants must love it. 

Tahan (man, put on a shirt, Alex thinks to himself irritably. Who can concentrate with all that… _Tahan_ around?) walks up the three short steps to the porch, and cocks his head at the cabin. “Come on in.”

<><><>

There’s nothing left of the drafty, doorless, broken-windowed cabin where Alex had gotten an extremely toothy blowjob from Cindy Shepherd the summer of his sophomore year. Tahan, predictably, is a neat freak. It looks… nice. Like a girl lives there, but nice. There’s a huge, sparkly purple geode in the corner, and a couple of landscape paintings on the walls. Several bunches of puffy blue flowers sit in jars of water, adding a faint scent to the air. Tahan’s bed is made so tightly Alex wishes he had a dime to bounce off of it.

Tahan _finally_ gets dressed, shrugging on a white t-shirt and running a comb through his hair. Alex suspects he usually straightens it, because it’s getting mad frizzy now. The shirt’s too small, and it’s clinging from the damp (as are Tahan’s trousers, which--), but Alex instantly feels about fifty percent less jumpy. 

“You always pick the worst times to drop by,” Tahan complains cheerfully. “I’m such a mess. Can I get you anything? I have, uh… potatoes. And eggs. Lots of potatoes and eggs.”

“Grandma sent you a basket.” Alex holds it up and gives it a shake. “No cookies, though. She didn’t have time.” 

“Oh my!” Tahan says, snatching the basket out of Alex’s hands. “Oh, she sent those little potato things! You don’t deserve that woman, Alex. None of us do.” 

Alex laughs as Tahan stuffs two of them into his mouth, chipmunklike. “Tell me about it.” 

Tahan swallows--his skinny neck bulges from the pressure--and he pours Alex a glass of water from the kitchen tap. Alex figures Tahan won’t be happy until he’s proved himself a good host, and takes a sip.

“So, how was the hangover?” Alex asks with a smirk.

“One for the ages. Again, Alex, I am so sorry--”

“Auuuuuuugh--” Alex groans. What’s with this guy and saying he’s sorry?

“I’m just saying--”

“ _AUUUUUUUGH,”_ Alex yells, increasing the volume until Tahan quits trying to apologize, laughing. 

“Fine, fine. You win,” Tahan says, rolling his eyes.

“I like winning.” 

“I know,” Tahan says kindly. “At any rate, thank you for being so… patient with me. I appreciate it.”

“You do say the craziest shit when you’re drunk,” Alex says, taking a sip. 

Tahan pales. “About my--I mean, about Joja?”

“No, you were sober for that. When you were drunk you talked about _magic apples.”_

“Oh!” Tahan looks relieved. “That. Thank God.” 

“You’re _happy_ you talked about imaginary dancing magic apples?” What was the alternative, exactly?

“I, ah, take it that means you haven’t seen the Junimo, then?” Tahan asks, faux-casually, voice going a little high.

“The _what?”_

<><><>

The old community center has always given Alex the creeps. It used to be a Halloween tradition for the kids of the valley to sneak in, eat candy, and hunt for ghosts. Alex dimly remembered going with Sam, Sebastian, and Abigail when he was younger, but Abigail’s stories and shadow puppets had made everything too real--when Abigail decided to make shit spooky, _shit got real spooky,_ even when she was ten--and he’d gone home early, scared to death. Mayor Lewis had locked the place up a few years later.

Tahan unlocks the door, which opens with a drawn-out, horror-movie groan. Alex blinks as he ducks inside, his eyes adjusting to the dim, cool interior. It’s--

It’s odd--doesn’t smell right. By now it should smell like dust and dry rot and stale air, but it doesn’t. Instead the whole place smells… fresh, and flowery. Like someone just cut a bunch of roses, or sliced a bunch of ripe apples. It’s… nice. 

“Mayor Lewis asked me to look in on the place,” Tahan says, pulling a flashlight out of his pocket. The sharp beam of light throws up spiderlike shadows on the walls, even though it’s dimmer than it should be. “Joja wants to tear the place down, of course, and make it a warehouse. But there’s… something here.”

“What’s that smell?” Alex says, drawing deeper breaths to catch more of it. Man, if they could bottle this scent, Alex would be _drowning_ in sexy ladies. 

“Magic,” Tahan says absently, as if that’s a normal-person answer. “Come on, over this way.”

 _“Magic,”_ Alex repeats. “Like--magic. Actual magic.”

“Yes. It’s very distinctive, once you get to know it. It’s all over the valley, especially around the edges.” 

And Tahan doesn’t blow raspberries, make coo-coo clock noises, eat a bunch of sexy nurses or do any of the other things Alex expects crazy people to do. He sounds totally matter-of-fact. 

He leads them over to a low hutch in a shadowed corner of the main room, by the old fireplace. It’s a little like a dog house, or an igloo. It’s made of tangled branches of wood, thatched with leaves--it takes Alex a second to realize it’s a single plant, and not one he recognizes, woven into a perfect little house. 

“Hey,” Tahan says gently, squatting down by the house’s entrance. “I brought a friend. I hope that’s okay.” 

Tahan holds something out--a fresh peach, practically glowing with ripeness in the dim light. Alex crouches down next to him, peering into the hutch. It’s empty, of course.

“There’s one now,” Tahan whispers, pointing at an empty patch of floor.

“Tahan--”

“Don’t make any sudden moves!” Tahan whispers urgently. “And don’t try to touch them. I don’t think they like it.”

Alex sees nothing, but Tahan sets the peach down by the entrance, and sits back. He’s making gentle little noises of encouragement, like he’s trying to lure a kitten.

“Come on, little guy. It’s for you. You asked for one, remember?”

“Tahan…” Alex doesn’t even know how to start this conversation. Maybe with tact. “There’s nothing _there,_ you crazy-ass--”

The peach abruptly vanishes, and Tahan turns to Alex with a grin.

Alex scrambles backward away from the hutch, stumbling and landing hard on his ass. His hair is standing on end all over his body, and the fresh flower smell is suddenly thick, cloying. It almost gives him a headache. 

He looks again, and the peach is still gone. Like a continuity error in a movie--there one frame, gone the next, and Alex _watched it happen._

“It’s alright,” Tahan says. “They won’t hurt you. I don’t think they can.”

_“What the fuck--”_

“Can… can you not see them?” Tahan’s brows knit together.

“Can I not see _what,_ Tahan, there’s nothing there!”

“The Junimo,” Tahan says, as if that explains anything. His eyes catch on something Alex can’t see. “They’re… nature spirits, I think. They seem to like me. They seem to like you, too. There’s one right by your left hand.” 

Alex jerks his hand away on instinct, then reaches out again and waves it back and forth. Nothing, of course.

But dimly, like it’s a long ways away and somehow right in his ear at the same time, he hears a peal of wild giggles, gone before he can be sure he heard it at all. 

Tahan stands with a stretch. He holds out a hand to Alex and pulls him to his feet. “Come on, I have an idea.”

Alex isn’t going to argue with anything that gets him the hell out of the community center. He manages to walk, rather than run, but it’s a close thing.

The smell, and the laughter, follow him out.

<><><>

“A _wizard.”_

“Yes.”

“A… wizard. A wizard lives in my town. Like… a wizard. If he had a business card, it would say ‘wizard.’”

“Yes, Alex.”

“Because… he’s a wizard. Who does wizard things.”

“I think the term is wizardry. We can ask him!” Tahan grins. He’s enjoying himself, the bastard. 

Alex’s head is spinning. He keeps looking over his shoulder to make sure the… whatevers aren’t following him. He keeps sniffing for a hint of that scent--which shouldn’t be that scary, it just smells like Abigail’s shampoo--but he can’t stop himself.

As they walk along the lake to the _friggin’ wizard’s house,_ Alex spots that red-headed lady--whatsherface, 8-for-body, 7-for-face, name starts with an L--walking towards them, holding a wicker basket of mushrooms. 

“Oh, damn it all to hell,” Tahan mutters.

“Well, _hello_ boys,” says Basically Okay Looking But Seems Like a Bit of a Drag and Too Old For Him Anyway, her eyes dancing with delight. “Where _ever_ are you off to today?”

“Visiting a neighbor. Hello, Leah,” Tahan says, friendly enough, but there’s something wary in his expression. 

Leah, right, that was it. Why had he been thinking Lucy? 

“So _nice_ to see you both,” Leah coohs, grinning so wide her jaw is practically creaking. _“Together.”_

“Charmed,” Tahan says through tightly clenched teeth. His left eye is developing a noticeable twitch. 

Leah puts a finger to her lips. “Now, how did you two meet again? It was one of those big brother, little brother mentoring programs, right?”

Twitch, goes the eye. Twitch twitch. 

“Well, this has been _lovely,_ dear sweet _Leah,_ but we’re going to visit Rasmodius now.” 

“Such fun!” Leah says. “Remember, Alex has a curfew.”

“No I don’t,” Alex says, offended. He hasn’t had a curfew in like, _a whole year._

 _“Thank you,_ Leah.” Tahan grabs Alex’s arm and begins to walk towards the distant stone tower, double time. 

“Make sure he’s home by nine!” 

Tahan begins swearing in another language. Alex doesn’t recognize a word of it, but he knows swearing when he hears it. 

“...Come visit when you’re done babysitting!” Leah calls out, and her sniggers follow them into the brush. Tahan hunches his shoulders, muttering darkly.

“You, ah, know her?” Alex says, once he judges that Tahan’s jaw muscles have unclenched enough for him to speak.

“Yes. Old art school friend. I apologize for her behavior--it’s tragic, really, but she can’t help it. She has a condition.”

“Which is...?” 

“It confounds doctors and scientists the world over. She has this rare disorder where she acts like an utter, howling _bitch_ all the time.”

“You can let go of my arm,” Alex says. Tahan releases his proprietary grip on Alex’s bicep. 

“So…” Alex decides to try Tact again. “You see magic apples. How’d that happen?”

“Well,” Tahan says, staring out at the lake as they walk. Alex rarely gets this deep into the woods. “I’d been in town a few days and Lewis asked me to check out the community center. I… saw something out of the corner of my eye, found this… odd message.. The next day, I received a letter from Rasmodius…” Tahan trails off. He shakes his head. “Truth be told, I was ready for it. It’s not even the strangest thing that’s happened to me, out here.” 

“Please don’t spring anything else on me. I feel like my mind is open enough for one day,” Alex says, and sure as shit, he’s got a headache. Life was complicated enough without adding wizards and invisible giggling ghosts. 

Tahan’s lips quirk upward with his not-actually-smiling smile. Alex has started to notice that aside from the demented grin he has when he thinks he’s being funny, all of Tahan’s expressions do double, sometimes triple duty. “Would you believe I came to Pelican Town because I received a letter from someone who died before I was born?”

“No.”

“Neither would I.” Tahan shakes his head. “And yet, here I am.”

As they approach the tower, Alex has a strange feeling creeping up on him. It’s… well it’s not the _weirdest_ thing of the day, not even close, it’ll be lucky to make the top five, the way his day is going, but Alex knows he’s seen the tower before. He’s seen it before, he’s seeing it now, and yet there’s something very… unremarkable about it. It’s like his eyes want to keep sliding off it. It’s a narrow, spindly thing a few stories tall, made of unevenly-mortared boulders of the local grey-brown stone. It leans heavily on its foundation; Alex would guess it’s mostly being held up by the ivy.

“Welcoming, isn’t he?” Tahan says. “Well, come on, let’s get this over with.”

Tahan climbs the stone steps up to the tower door. Alex pauses at the foot of the stairs, as his headache suddenly goes from annoying to _really_ **_super_ ** _annoying._

“Tahan, come on, this is a waste of time,” Alex says. He can feel himself drooping with weariness. “It’s hot. I wanna go home.”

“No you don’t,” Tahan says easily, trotting down the steps. “Come on. It’ll be fun.” 

Man, Tahan is a drag. Alex just wants to go home, scare up a sandwich, stretch out on his bed and forget about that weird, boring tower. He wants it bad. Tahan can go to hell for trying to stop him. Tahan _can’t_ stop him.

“Come on,” Tahan insists, grabbing Alex by both wrists and pulling. “Up up up.”

“Dude, let go of me--”

“It’s something he put on the stairs, come on, Alex, you just have to power through it--”

“I said, _get your goddamn hands off me--_ ” Alex yells, jerking wildly. Tahan loses one wrist but yanks hard on the other, and Alex loses his balance, flails forward--

\--And catches himself on the landing with his hands, and just like that, the feeling is gone. He’s still annoyed at Tahan, and he’d still rather go home, but it’s not… screaming at him anymore. 

“Sorry,” Tahan says, helping Alex up. “I should have warned you about that. It gets easier once you’ve done it before.”

“What the hell,” Alex moans. He gives his sore shoulder an experimental roll; if Tahan made him pull something that screws up his fitness regimen, there’ll be hell to pay. “Why did I even get up this morning?”

“A question without useful answers,” Tahan replies. “Trust me on this one.”

Tahan pounds on the ancient wooden door, the knocks echoing. 

“Rasmodius, it’s me!” Tahan yells. “Let me in!”

Alex hears a thunderous bellow of “Enter!” as Tahan opens the door with another appropriate horror-movie creak. 

Inside, it’s dim, and the first thing Alex notices is that whiff of flowers again, before it’s all but drowned out by the gerbil-cage smell of unwashed dude and unvacuumed carpets. Everything is covered thickly in dust: the heavy bookshelves, an enormous rusted cauldron that has a few sullen embers and what looks like month’s worth of ash under it. Something glows dimly purple off in the far corner; Alex catches a glimpse of an enormous book chained to a pedestal before that shrieking feeling of _this isn’t important AND YOU REALLY SHOULDN’T BE LOOKING AT IT_ goes off behind his eyes like a firecracker. 

The wizard himself is sitting at a table that’s covered--like, _three feet deep covered_ \--in books and scrolls and old plates of bones and greasy smudges. He’s a big bear of a man, with a mane of greasy dark purple hair and a weirdly neat, dapper goatee, and a big red nose full of broken veins--which is when Alex realizes that he knows the guy, or he’s seen him around anyway, at festivals and sometimes taking up a corner table at the Stardrop and drinking the stuff Gus brews that even Pam calls rat poison. He just didn’t realize that old weirdo was supposed to be a _wizard._

“What is it?” Rasmodius booms, and he certainly _sounds_ like a wizard. His voice is rich and velvety and really stupid _loud._ “Boy, you have interrupted my meditations.”

Tahan walks slowly over to the table, letting a single finger rest on an empty bottle of vodka. “So I see.”

“It is a most inopportune time,” Rasmodius says, waving his arms like he’s conducting an invisible orchestra. “The, erm, the arcane alignments are most--” 

His gestures are big and theatrical; he’d fit right in one of those swords-n-maidens movies Grandpa watches when nothing with guns or pinup girls is available. Alex can’t figure out if it’s because he’s a poser, or if he’s just incredibly drunk.

It only takes him a couple of seconds to decide he’s _obviously_ both.

“I wouldn’t trouble you, sir, but I have a problem. I require your assistance.” There’s nothing about Tahan that seems insincere. His eyes are wide and soulful; he puts a hand on Rasmodius’ arm, and it all _looks_ good, but somehow Alex can tell it’s bullshit. “Please, sir. You’re my only hope.”

“Well,” harrumphs the wizard. “It’s to be expected. To whom else can you turn? Who else can part the veils, can reveal the grand tapestry that is our Universe to your blind and mundane eyes? Who can make base flesh behold the wonders of the--”

“Yes, sir, Master Wizard,” Tahan interrupts him, so nicely it barely seems rude at all. Alex is taking notes. “My friend here desires an audience with the Junimo, but he cannot see them. Please, sir, help him. Take the veils from his eyes. Be our shepherd.” 

Alex stifles a snigger. Tahan shoots him a _look,_ but Alex is used to Grandma’s, so it barely ruffles his hair. It doesn’t matter though, because Rasmodius is clearly so drunk--and so, _so_ far up his own butt--that it would take a lot more than that to get his attention. He stands, suddenly, sending scrolls and mugs full of old milk tea gone to shellac crashing to the ground. He makes his unsteady (yet majestic, like an old wooden sailing ship with a missing mast and a bad list) way over to Alex. 

Alex doesn’t like big drunk guys looming over him. In fact, his first urge is to belt the wizard in the stomach and run for the door. He doesn’t smell any better close up, either. Alex clenches his jaw as Rasmodius peers into his eyes and grabs Alex’s chin with his grimy hands, turning his face this way and that. 

“Impossible,” the wizard says, throwing up his big meaty paws in disgust. “Insupportable. This lad is the most mundane creature it has been my _singular misfortune_ to gaze upon, in all the grandly storied days of my life. He is a clod of the first order. He has no receptivity to the elegant energies, not a drop of--”

“I will pay you five hundred gilder,” Tahan interrupts smoothly.

“--Still, musn’t be so hasty,” Rasmodius says. “Come come. Let’s get that third eye open, young man.” 

<><><>

“Blecch.” 

“Yes, I know.”

 _“Blecch,”_ Alex says, spitting over the side of the steps. “Did he make _you_ drink that stuff?” 

“Yes,” Tahan says. “Of course, _I_ could already see them.”

“I just drank _glowing green shit_ from a _cauldron._ It tasted like a _tree fart._ And it’s all your fault.” 

“I’ll make it up to you,” Tahan says. “Come on, you’ve had a mystical experience. I’ve known people who waste a lot of money and recreational pharmaceuticals to have what you’ve had. You’re One with the Universe now!” 

“You are so full of shit.” 

“Don’t you feel like you could dance to the music of the spheres?” Tahan says, doing a dance that makes him look like a combination of a snake charmer’s cobra and an emu trying to catch a bus.

“ _Shit. From a cauldron. Your fault.”_

He had seen the Junimo, though. And what’s more, he’s still seeing them. 

As they walk through the Cindersap forest, he’ll see a flash of movement in the corner of his eye, and when he spins to look, he’ll catch a glimpse of a little… apple thing, a bouncing little sprite, green or blue or pink. Every breeze brings their laughter, like they’re following along after him.

“That’ll fade,” Tahan says. “They’re excited because you’re new. Couple days, they’ll leave you alone.”

“Couple _days?”_

“Sorry,” Tahan says, not sounding sorry at all. “And--come on. There’s one more thing I want you to see.”

<><><>

To Alex’s surprise, they don’t head back to the community center--instead, Tahan takes him through the middle of town, up past Lewis’s house and towards the north bridge. He stops before crossing; on the far side of the river, Alex can see the looming bulk of the JojaMart building.

“I’d rather not go inside,” Tahan says. “But--I think you should. And you ought to do it now, while you're still… sensitized.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“There aren’t words for it,” Tahan replies, looking grim. “I’ll… drop by your house tomorrow. So we can talk. Okay?”

“Okay, sure, whatever,” Alex says. And actually a JojaCola would hit the spot right now; maybe it’ll get the shit-from-a-cauldron taste out of his mouth. 

Tahan heads home, and Alex crosses the bridge alone toward the store. He’s about five feet from the door when the screaming starts.

It’s faint--like the laughter he heard in the community center, in the forest--but it’s persistent. Many voices-- _so many--_ screaming in unmistakable pain, like a school bus is on fire. It’s a bright, sunny day, so there’s no reason for the sun to suddenly seem… dim, and brown.

He reaches out and grabs the door, and for a split second he sees…

The sun _is_ brown, choked behind clouds of smog coming from smokestacks, up in the mountains where Robin's cabin should be. The river, black with sludge and trash, dead fish and birds rotting on the shore. Concrete, filling the valley from brim to brim, and there, by the bridge, is a tall old man he’s never seen before, holding a Junimo cupped protectively in his hands, teeth bared with hatred and fury as he stares out at JojaMart--

Alex jerks his hand off the door handle, like it burned him. The vision vanishes as he lets go, before he takes a few clumsy steps back. He feels like he’s looking at a hungry predator--part of him wants to run, the other part can’t turn his back to it. 

His body finally decides to flee. He runs all the way home, and the screams follow him.

<><><>

He fends off Grandma’s anxious questions--he’s breathing hard, equal parts panic and exertion, and he probably looks like a crazy person--and goes straight to his room.

He shucks off his jacket as he enters his bedroom, shutting the door behind him. As he passes his bookshelf--which he usually avoids looking at, so as to avoid thinking about--he pauses, remembering Tahan’s words about Joja-approved curriculums. Down at the bottom are a few of his old textbooks from high school. He bends over to grab his dimly-remembered History of the Ferngill Republic (C-, and only because the history teacher, Mrs. Gaskill, was getting porked by the gridball coach) and turns it to the first page.

Down at the bottom, under the author’s name and publication date: _Printed by History Told Right._

_A Subsidiary of JojaLearn!_

Maybe that sinking feeling is just leftover anxiety from thinking about homework, back in the day--but he can feel the hair on the back of his neck creep. 

He goes hunting through the house. It isn’t hard to find more.

His letter jacket--right there on the label. _Manufactured by JojaClothes,_ colon, _Giving Children Opportunities To Learn The Garment Trade!_

He almost doesn’t want to wear it anymore. (But what’s he supposed to wear instead? _All_ his clothes are made by Joja, or some subsidiary.)

Grandpa’s remote control. A little sticker on the inside of Grandma’s gardening gloves. The ketchup in the fridge _(75% delicious, heart-healthy sucralose by volume!),_ the tea kettle, the water heater chugging and clanking in the hall closet, the aspirin in the kitchen cupboard, the sponsors on the news show Grandpa watches when there isn’t any good cowboy or sci-fi on--it’s all Joja.

Joja Joja Joja Joja. He sees the logo when he closes his eyes. 

_Shit._

He feels… scared, helpless, like he’s standing on the edge of a cliff and looking down. What the hell is he supposed to do now?

<><><>

Late that night, after Alex and his pool buddies are stuffed with pizza and garlic bread, he slides closed the flimsy beaded curtain between the game room and the main body of the Stardrop Saloon. It’s hardly a cone of silence, but it’s a sign that there’s Serious Business to Be Discussed--the last time it was invoked was junior year, when Abigail’s boyfriend cheated on her and the three boys had planned where to ditch the body. 

Sebastian pauses and looks up from trying to talk Sam out of eating a chicken wing he found under the sofa (a wasted exercise). Abigail turns to him expectantly as she chalks the end of her pool cue. 

“So, um, guys,” Alex says, palms sweaty. He’s never liked public speaking. Which is somehow what this feels like. 

Sam makes another grab for the mummified wing, but Sebastian slaps it out of his hand. “D’aww, c’mon!” Sam whines. “It’s salt and vinegar, that like, kills all the germs?” 

“Guys!” Alex snaps, voice cracking. “Would you shut the hell up for a second?!”

Abigail’s eyebrows raise. Sebastian turns and stares. Sam… seems to still have his eyes locked on the chicken wing, but two out of three’s good enough.

“I think…” Alex takes a deep breath. “I think there’s something… really sketchy about JojaMart.”

“Well, duh,” Abigail says. 

“What?” Sam asks, eyes wide. Then he tries to make a dive for the wing on the floor, but Sebastian has a grip on his belt and knocks the wing under the couch with his pool cue.

“And, um…” Alex wishes he had something to drink, his mouth is _really dry._ “I think we ought to do something about it.” 

“Sounds fun,” Abigail says. “I’m in. Sebbers?”

“Obviously. Sam, _goddamnit--”_

“Aww come on, man, it has ranch sauce on it!”

Alex figured the ayes had it, one way or the other. Sam would be down for anything involving mayhem, or putting gross shit in his mouth. Alex doesn’t know how that’ll help, but as Rigg Cartwright would say, _a man can’t choose his allies when he’s got his ass to the wall._

“I was thinking some breaking-and-entering would be a good place to start,” Alex says, keeping one eye on the beaded curtain. 

“Kick-ass,” Sam says, eyes wide. “I think that’s a _great_ idea.”

Oh, great. _Sam_ thinks it’s a great idea. It sounds good, to _Sam._

Alex tries not to feel doomed. 

Tries. 


	6. Glamour Shot

“Hold your head up a little more,” Haley says, staring down the viewfinder. That self-conscious little line knits itself between Alex’s green eyes. 

“This is weird.” He hunches his shoulders, then drops them again at Haley’s little growl. She adjusts the focus--the sun-dappled lake behind him blurs; his eyes sharpen. Perfect. 

“Get used to it,” Haley says lightly, snapping a few shots. “Gridball players get photographed every day.”

“Well, I’m not a gridball player.” Alex’s eyes flick down, his lips curve down at the edges. There, perfect. Pensive. _Brooding_.

Liking pretty things, like Haley does, means liking to look at things, at the end of the day, and Alex is never so handsome as when he’s not thinking about it. Which is--to be fair--not often. 

“Are we done yet?”

“No,” Haley says. Not by a long shot, but telling Alex that wouldn’t help. 

It’s strange--because he’d always been the hottest boy in school, and she’d been the prettiest girl, and it seemed… inevitable. That they were destined for each other, whether they liked it or not. Yet every time they so much as bump shoulders, Haley feels this cliff-brink moment of vertigo; she sees their whole life, sex to pregnancy to marriage to death, spool out in front of her, as inescapable as a speeding bus. 

Through a camera was better. She could keep her distance that way.

“Look out over the lake.” Haley zooms in on his face. _“Don’t_ squint!”

“‘S’bright.” 

“Pretend you’re sad.” 

Alex twists his expression into an elaborate sad-clown face. It splits into a grin as Haley chucks a smokehouse almond at him--when enlisting Alex Christopher Mulner for any endeavor taking longer than fifteen minutes, a wise woman brings snacks--and she gets a couple shots of his smile.

Sometimes she thinks she does love him. He _is_ handsome, and he’s honest, and he’s always been… good to her, despite the fact that his mouth will probably get him shot someday--either because he gives the wrong backhanded compliment, or because someone makes the mistake of getting him started on macronutrients and decides that a bullet is the cure. But they’ve always just been friends. Carefully, pointedly friends. Maybe it’s because he feels that same doomed, claustrophobic feeling when they get close. 

Though sometimes, especially lately, she thinks it’s… probably something else. Like the fact that he might be--to use the technical term-- _super gay._

Alex’s face goes pensive; perfect. Then he starts thinking about what his face is doing, and that ruins it. Damn it. 

“Stop that.”

“Stop _what_ _?_ I could be working out right now. Or hanging out with--” Alex pauses, and blinks. Like he had an unfamiliar thought. _Realization Dawns, Full color, digital._

“You get Tahan to model for me, and you’re off the hook,” Haley says. Testing the waters. 

Watching people, if you’re smart--and Haley knows she’s smart, even though it suits her for most people to think otherwise--means picking up on more than they realize. 

“You wanna photograph Tahan?” Alex scoffs. “That dork?”

Alex’s befuddled look is perfect. _Oblivious Male, Greyscale._ She could fill an entire gallery with pictures of men making that look. It’d sell, too. It’d sell big.

“Dork or not, he’s gorgeous,” Haley says. 

_“What?”_

“Oh come on.” Haley fiddles with the shutter speed. They’re losing the light, damn it. “Those eyes, that hair, that skin? Those _lips?_ He’s about six inches taller than he needs to be, and, like you said, total dorkus, but other than that? He’s hot. Trust me.”

“Tahan’s… hot,” Alex says, and he makes a face, like a wine connoisseur testing a dubious vintage. “Huh.” 

“Let’s sit down on that log,” Haley says, pointing. “I want to play with the shadows a bit.”

“Do I keep my shirt on this time?” Alex grins again and sits down on the log. 

“Go ahead, put on a show. I won’t stop you,” Haley says. Sadly, Alex doesn’t take the bait. 

Let’s see something guarded. Defensive.

“You’ve been spending a lot of time with Tahan lately,” Haley remarks, capturing the rapid shuttering of Alex’s face in real time. 

“Grandma told me to.” 

Of course she did, sweetheart. And that’s why you see him every day. 

“I’ve been feeling neglected,” Haley says, pouting. There, his eye-roll; perfect. 

“He’s okay. He’s… I dunno. He’s different.”

 _Different?_ Alex has always had a talent for understatement, like the time he described her as _kinda pretty._ Tahan is like a visitor from another _planet,_ one Haley has only ever seen in glossy magazines. The one she’ll live on someday. The one she’ll rule. Tahan would look exquisitely at home on the deck of a yacht, surrounded by people with caramel skin and long dark lashes and gold watches and clothes that are always perfect. 

When he’d introduced himself, weeks ago, she’d made several dozen rapid-fire calculations--she wasn’t about to give it up for some local clown, but _surely_ this tall drink of money was worth a moment’s pause--that came to nothing. It had taken her maybe fifteen seconds to figure out that he was, tragically, the single gayest human being she had ever encountered.

“Arms over your head, like you’re stretching. No, keep your hands open.” 

She gets that perfect line, wrist to shoulder, that narrow flash of his stomach as his shirt rides up. Now, if only he’d dress better, then he’d _really_ look like a model, but she’s not about to inflate his already massive (yet oddly fragile) ego by telling him so.

“Why are we doing this?” Alex asks. “I mean, I’m happy to help, Hales. But…”

“I’m building my portfolio. Now, make like you’re changing out of your shirt--yes, like that. Pull it up a little more.”

“I need a favor,” Alex says, posing, at least 60% of his torso on display.

“Name it, babe. And hold that pose.”

“Well. Um. We--Sebastian, Sam, Abigail, and I--are doing something. We could use your help.”

“I need details,” Haley says. “I don’t do anything blind. You know, maybe just take the whole shirt off.”

Alex groans and rolls his eyes, like getting him to strip is a chore, even though she knows the only reason he wears shirts spring-through-autumn is because his grandmother won’t let him leave the house without one. He complies, though, and he’s shaking out his hair when, of course...

“Oh, hello Alex!” Tahan calls breathlessly from the woods behind them. And then, his voice going slightly flat, “And... _Haley._ What are we, uh, up to?”

Alex-- _brightens._

There’s no other word for it, and Haley is surprised at the little stab of hurt, or disappointment maybe, that she feels deep down. The tension Alex carries in his shoulders, the little defensive line between his brows, that bit of wariness he’s always got in his dreamy green eyes--it all falls away as Tahan approaches. His mouth twitches into his usual smirk, but his everything else seems to have a different agenda.

“‘Sup, loser,” is what Alex _says,_ but everything except his mouth is saying… 

She surreptitiously captures a few shots. _Yearning,_ she’ll call it. 

“‘Sup yourself, _old sport,”_ Tahan says, like it’s a private joke between them. Then, with a wrench that is almost visibly painful, he makes himself acknowledge that there is, in fact, another human present, and turns to her. “Hello, Haley. I didn’t realize you were a photographer,” Tahan says. 

And he’s far too well brought up to throw the basket down and snatch a big handful of her hair in a screaming jealous rage, but he’s thinking it, she can tell. Which is _hilarious,_ really. Haley could do a striptease, fall to her knees and beg Alex to take her, take her right here and now, or else she’ll surely die, and he’d still look about half as interested as he does now, talking to a fully clothed Tahan.

Life just isn’t fair sometimes.

“I’m her favorite model,” Alex says, flexing, making his Model Face. Lips pursed, eyes narrowed in what Alex probably fondly imagines is a seductive glance. 

“I can see why--I mean, I’d love to see. Some of your pictures. Haley.” 

Good save, Tahan. She hides a smile and shows him the little digital display. Not how her work should be seen--a double page full-color spread in _Maximal Lifestyle_ would suit it better--but it will have to do for now. 

“These are…” Tahan glances up at her, then back down at the screen. “These are actually quite good. You have a gift, Haley.”

He’s paused on a picture. Not, as she might have expected, on one of the borderline-softcore shots, but one of Alex mid-laugh, eyes bright, teeth flashing. Tahan’s expression has gone soft, and damn it, she _wants_ to capture that look, but he’s still holding her camera. If only they could just put a camera in her head, like in one of those sci-fi shows Sebastian likes. 

She spends a moment imagining Tahan’s reaction to some of the _other_ pictures she’s taken of Alex. _Beefcake in a Speedo. Beefcake Under a Waterfall. Beefcake Wearing One-Third of a Gridball Uniform, If That._

Maybe for his birthday. 

“I’d love to take a few of you,” Haley says, taking her camera back before he finds the shots of Alex’s Adonis belt and has an attack of the vapours. 

“That--” And Tahan goes… _wary,_ suddenly. “Are you, ah, planning to post them online?” he asks, with a totally normal, appropriate, casual amount of interest in the answer to a **_super_ **unimportant question. 

Aha. A- _frickin’-_ ha. Loverboy is hiding something.

“No,” Haley says. “I’m building a portfolio, but it’d be for submission only. Please?” She flutters her eyelashes, twirls a blond curl around one finger. If only she chewed gum; the gesture needs a big pink bubble. 

Tahan’s lips twitch--he can see what she’s doing, alright, and damn but if it isn’t nice to meet a man who knows she’s mocking him.

“Alright.” Tahan sets the basket down, and fidgets a little with his untucked shirt. “Though I’m sure I look a mess.”

“You look--” Alex begins, and Haley can just see the words-- _her_ words--get caught in a flaming fifteen-car pileup in Alex’s brain. System error. Catastrophic operating-system crash. Hard reset required. 

_Tell him,_ Haley urges him silently. _Go on, tell him how he looks. I_ **_dare_ ** _you._

“You look as good as you ever do,” Alex says with a smirk. “Nerd.”

If Tahan’s doofy answering smile is anything to go by, his IQ had immediately plummeted an easy fifteen points. By Yoba, no wonder he left the big city to go seduce country boys instead, if his game is this much of a disaster. 

“You’ve got--something in your hair,” Tahan says.

“Oh?” Alex says, reaching up.

“Here, let me--” Tahan says, and his fingers are suddenly running through Alex’s thick brown hair, and his fingertips brush Alex’s cheek on the retreat, and she can hear the hitch of Alex’s breath from five feet away, and then their eyes meet, and Tahan bites his lip, and they’re about six inches apart, and _goddamnit what are you waiting for,_ take the shot, this shit is _gold,_ every gay interest rag in Fern Maximal would _kill_ for this picture.

“That’s nice,” Haley says with perfect nonchalance. “Hold that pose.”

“Alright,” Tahan says faintly.

“Uh, yeah,” Alex says, voice rough.

“Perfect.” Haley takes a few extra for good measure. “That’s just perfect, you guys. Now Alex, put your arm around his shoulders. Face me.” 

Alex wrinkles his nose, but he slings his bare arm around Tahan readily enough. Tahan’s purpling face betrays his sudden rush of hormones; his eyes, locked on hers, eloquently promise death. 

“Relax, dude,” Alex says, jostling him.

“I’m _trying,”_ Tahan says through gritted teeth. 

“Pretend you’re in your happy place,” Haley suggests. If Tahan were any stiffer, Alex could hoist him sideways and use him as a boogie board.

“My happy place. Right.” Tahan inhales. “I’m a slave to your vision,” says his mouth, politely. _I hate you and I pray for your death,_ say his eyes, somewhat less politely. 

“Why, Tahan,” Haley says, getting a great shot of Tahan’s warm, cinnamon-colored murder eyes. “Lines like that, it’s no wonder the ladies love you.”

“ _Quite._ ”

But after a few more snaps, he _does_ loosen up, a little. Haley notices that Tahan knows, instinctively, how to stay out of shadows, how to arrange himself in a shot, how to ignore the camera.

 _Used to being photographed professionally_ , she adds to her Mystery of Tahan mental file. 

“Now pretend Alex said something funny,” Haley says.

“Haley, love, I’m not that good an actor,” Tahan demurs.

“Bitch, I’m _hilarious,”_ Alex growls, mock-angry, and tries to give Tahan a quick jab to the chest, which he dodges. He’s quick on his feet. Oh, there’s the laughter she wants, free and spontaneous, Tahan’s teeth flashing white in an unguarded moment. The rampant homoeroticism is just icing on the cake. Or maybe the homoeroticism _is_ the cake and everything else is the icing. She’ll workshop it.

Tahan dodges around Alex, who seems to be attempting to put him in a headlock. 

“Boys,” she says, and they break off, laughing. “As--” _something_ “--fun as this is, we’ve officially lost the light.” 

“Oh, what a shame,” Tahan says, fluttering his own patently unfair lashes, and draping himself across the log, arranging his overlong limbs for elegance--like a sensuous cassowary--and his expression into a much more credible version of Alex’s sexy face. “And we were having _such_ a good time.”

“Do that again,” Haley commands, bringing up the camera. “But… smoulder more.”

“How do you suggest…?”

“I don’t know.” Then her lips curve upward. “Think about someone special.”

Their eyes both land on Alex, shrugging into his size-too-small shirt, which clings to him and--damn it, Alex doused himself in the lake, and she _missed it?_ Tahan’s eyes make a leisurely--no, lingering--sweep, and he turns back to Haley, and--damn, dude, she said _smoulder,_ not burn a hole in her lens. 

“Better?” Tahan inquires, arching one perfect brow, and oh, that is _perfect._ Amused, indolent-- _on fire._

She refrains from taking a picture of the look on Alex’s face as he turns and sees Tahan lounging like a tiger-skin rug. The look he gets when he’s hit with a whole lot of new information at once. It’s a great shot, but…

Some things are just too personal. 

“Well,” Tahan says, sitting up and brushing himself off. “This was… actually rather fun. I’d just been planning to take a walk around the lake, if… _either_ of you would like to join me?” 

Haley wonders what Tahan would do if she called his bluff, and said, _why yes, Tahan, that sounds perfectly charming._ Grab her by the neck and throw them both into the lake, she expects. 

“Actually, uh,” Alex says, eyes darting every which way but Tahan. “I would. Um. Like that, yeah, but I need to, um, talk to...” He gestures helpfully at her. 

“Haley,” she provides, in a tone of friendly reminder.

“Yeah that,” Alex says, turning purple. 

“Oh. Of course,” Tahan says, hiding disappointment about as well as Alex hides low blood sugar. “I… yes. I’ll see you tomm--soon. Yes?” 

“Yeah,” Alex says. 

And then they just _stare_ at each other. Haley lets it stand for a while, just to see where it goes. When it’s about thirty seconds past _funny_ and veering into _painfully awkward,_ she takes pity on them and breaks it first. 

“Shall we?” she says, crooking her arm and offering it to Alex, just because it’s funny. He takes it absently, and ooh, there’s Tahan with the murder eyes again. Shame she already put her camera away. 

“Sure,” Alex says, and they head back to town, arm-in-arm. 

He looks back twice, though. Haley notices things like that. 

“What did you want to talk to me about?” Haley prods him, when it’s clear he’s just going to pine the rest of the evening if she doesn’t. 

“Oh. Right.” Alex reins his thoughts in from whenever they were headed--him, Tahan, and a horizontal surface, would be her guess--and shakes his head. 

She waits.

“So…” he begins uneasily. “What do you know about JojaCorp?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! I'm back to work, so chapters will be a bit slower--that being said, the next one is a big one, The Great Joja Heist, and I'm hoping to have it up by the end of the week. Stay tuned, and send me comments. I feed on your words, like a parasitic fungus!


	7. The Great Joja Heist

PART 1: THE HONEYPOT

“Oh, come  _ on,  _ Haley,” Alex says, despite knowing full well that Haley is the one person in the world even more immune to his cajoling than Grandma. “Just talk to the guy.”

“It’s sexist, demeaning, and also…” Haley’s eyes slide over to the bar, where the object of their discussion seems to be asleep with his face in a puddle of beer. Alex worked behind the counter at the Stardrop for a summer, and he knows how often those countertops...  _ aren’t  _ cleaned.  _ “Ick.” _

“Come on, Haley. For the cause,” Abigail says, lips quirking. She’s got her purple hair up today, and she’s clearly itching to get back to the off-in-the-corner game of checkers she’s embroiled in with… whatsherface, Basically Cute If She Wasn’t Like Thirty, the redhead who dresses like an extra from a Rigg Cartwright movie. 

“Fine then,  _ you _ do it,” Haley snaps. “I’m all for skullduggery, but I’m not going to fight injustice with my tits.”

“Look at that guy,” Sebastian says. “He’s clearly addicted to internet porn, and you  _ do _ look like a cam girl, Abbers.”

“So do you,” Abigail replies sweetly, before wandering back to her game with… That One Lady.

“Oh for… Sam, are you sure you don’t have a keycard?” Alex turns to Sam, sitting on the billiards table and sucking down a 64-ounce glass of something toxic waste green. 

“I kept losing them?” Sam says, cheeks concave from slurping. “So I’m not allowed anymore?”

“...Makes sense,” Haley says. “I’m still not doing it. If I’m going to use my wiles for the side of righteousness, it’s not gonna be to get a keycard out of the town drunk.”

“He’s not that bad. He’s a... sloppy bear. It’s a thing. Kinda?” Sebastian makes a wishy-washy gesture. 

“Alex, let him feel your biceps or something. Maybe he swings that way,” Haley suggests. 

“...you think that’d work?”

“Maybe we’re going about this all wrong,” Haley says, quirking her perfectly glossed lips. “Maybe what Shane needs is a  _ friend.” _

“Fine.” Alex throws up his hands. “Which of us is the friendliest?”

<><><>

“Hey? Shane? Whatcha doing?”

Shane raises his head a few scant inches, opening bleary, bloodshot eyes at Sam, who is beaming with friendliness and reeking of the half-bottle of cheap bodyspray he soaks himself with in lieu of showering every morning.

“It’s Sam? From work?”

Shane makes a noise somewhere between a growl and a deep, animal whine of suffering, and blearily shoves Sam away, like a grizzly bear swatting a fly before returning to hibernation. 

“Ha ha yeah,” Sam says, looking a little panicked. “So uh… having a good time?”

Shane says nothing, having returned to resting his comatose face on the countertop. Sam hesitantly gives him a little poke on the shoulder. Nothing. He does it again, harder, provoking a  _ harrumph _ noise and the odd little shake that Dusty does when he’s still mostly asleep.

Sam looks over at them in the arcade with a helpless, deer-in-the-headlights look and an equally helpless shrug. 

“Why did we think Sam was our best option?” Sebastian asks the ceiling, or maybe the room generally. 

“Show some skin!” Haley calls helpfully, earning a panicked expression from Sam and an odd look from Gus behind the bar. Sam, ever accommodating, lifts his shirt a little. Shane seems to be unconscious, so this display of scorching hot sex is wasted. 

Sebastian squeezes his eyes shut. From the checkerboard, Redhead Whatsherface wolf-whistles, and is then laughingly shushed by Abigail. The two of them have their heads together, Abigail staring up through her bangs, eyes bright, and maybe he’s been around Haley (or Tahan) too much, but Alex can’t help but notice that bright purple hair and bright red hair kind of clash. 

“Couldn’t you use your powers for good, Haley,” Sebastian groans into his hands. 

Haley’s eyes don’t lift from her microscopic inspection of her nailbeds. “No.”

“Oh for--” Alex gets up from his beanbag chair, and walks over to the bar. “Oy. Shane. Wake up, man, we wanna talk to you.”

“Fukkoff,” Shane grumbles, swatting at Alex. This upsets the delicate balance of ass-on-barstool and Shane slides slowly sideways, like a blue polyester avalanche in slow motion. 

“Crap--”

“Oh  _ jeez, _ how much does he--”

Frantic effort on Alex, Sam, and Sebastian’s part manage to get Shane from the floor to the nearby couch. The dude is  _ really heavy-- _ with the perpetual sneer and booze-rage it’s easy to overlook how damn  _ big _ the guy is. Under the beer-flab and the cheez-bizkit-stained hoodie, the guy’s built like a plowhorse.

“What what what what  _ whaaaaaaaaaaat,” _ Shane groans like a constipated elk. “Gothefuggaway.”

“We need a favor,” Alex says. “Can we borrow your keycard?”

Shane narrows his eyes; rather than making him look dangerously alert, it just makes him look sleepy. Like one of those grumpy kitties on Grandma’s calendar.

“Like, my work card?”

“Yeah,” Sebastian says. “We’re not gonna do anything--”

“Fukkit,” Shane says. “I don’t care. What’re they gonna do, kill me?” Something in his expression implies that Joja would be doing him a favor.

He pulls out a battered leather wallet and starts pulling out cards at random. His ID, a Pete’s Drippy Cheeze Melts Rewards Card (shock) and a handful of credit cards that Alex can somehow tell are maxed out. Something catches his eye--it’s a rumpled official portrait of a minor-league gridball player, trim and alert, with one of those expensive haircuts and bright brown eyes, grinning ear to ear. His jersey reads  _ Santiago _ , over a large number 6. 

“Who’s that? Your nephew?” Abigail asks, having pulled herself away from the ginger woman who isn’t hot enough to rock that much attitude. 

“S’me,” Shane mumbles, sorting through a pile of expired gift cards. He looks up, and sees a circle of wide eyes. “What? What’re you looking at?”

“Nothing,” Alex says.

“Nothing.” Haley takes a discreet snap with her phone.

“Nothing,” Sebastian says, putting up his hands and staring at the ceiling.

“Your body,” Sam says. Sebastian smacks him upside the head. “What! C’mon!”

Is that what happens to athletes when they hit their twenties? Alex swears off carbs on the spot. It’s like staring into a crystal ball. A sad, sweaty crystal ball. 

Will everyone razz him if he goes in the corner and does some crunches? Yeah, probably.

“You played gridball?” Alex blurts out. 

“Yeah, long time ago,” Shane says, pulling out a sticky-looking plastic card and holding it out to Alex. “Never got anywhere.”

“I, uh. I wanted to go pro.” Alex confesses. His palms are sweaty. He’s panicking. Why is he panicking.

For the first time, Shane looks directly at him, and under his sleep-swollen face--Alex can see the clear outline of one of Gus’ coasters on his cheek--and his deeply shadowed eyes, he looks… old. Old, tired, and sad as hell. Maybe as sad as anyone Alex has ever seen. 

“Yeah?” Shane’s lips twist into something between a smirk and a sneer. “What stopped you, hotshot? Take the card and leave me the hell alone.” He flips the card across the table to Alex and lurches unsteadily to his feet, swatting a babbling Sam out of his way like a bear would a traffic cone. “Gus, gimme another. And keep the fuckin’ kids away from me this time.”

Alex looks down at the grimy card, face pale. 

“Yay, we did it…?” Abigail says into the silence. 

<><><>

PART 2 -- THE DISTRACTION

It’s past midnight when they make their move. 

Watching Sam do covert ops is a little like watching Grandpa do the Dance of Seven Veils (like in the underappreciated classic,  _ The Bosomy Swans of Araby _ ). Just wrong, categorically wrong. Alex’s brain doesn’t have a space for it. Especially since, for some reason, the previous day’s conversation with Haley is rampaging through his brain like Dusty chasing after a squirrel.

“So, uh,” Alex rubbed sweating palms on his jeans. “Sebastian.”

“Yeah?” Sebastian whispers back, eyes burning holes in Sam’s back as he creeps up to the fence, bolt cutters in hand.

“Do you think Tahan is… hot?”

Sebastian turns to Alex, surprise making his eyes open all the way. Which, is, like, a first. “I’m sorry,  _ what?” _

“Nevermind,” Alex mutters. Stupid Haley. Stupid… words in his brain.

“I mean, he’s not really--”

“I said,  _ nevermind.” _

“He’s kind of charming, I guess, but, ah, why--”

_ “Seb. Drop it.” _

“I guess he’s…” Sebastian frowns. “I hadn’t really thought about it, since he’s so obviously hung up on y--” Sebastian’s mouth shuts abruptly. “But, yeah, objectively? I suppose he’s pretty good looking.” 

Alex’s jaw squeaks as he unclenches it. “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. Dresses well. Nice eyes. Actually, he’s really handsome--”

“Oh  _ is he,” _ Alex manages to not hiss. Mostly.

Sebastian looks up suddenly, and goes slightly pale--well, paler--when he reads something on Alex’s face, which feels all flushed and sweaty. “I’m. Um. Just kidding. Who’s Tahan?”

_ That’s what I thought,  _ says some extremely smug part of his brain. What? Alex isn’t used to self reflection, but…  _ what? _

“Uh, guys? Little help?”

Sam’s role in this is simple. Like… third-grader simple. Alex knows he should never have aimed as high as third grade. Sam’s job is to cross the loading bay (he’d nudged the security cameras out of alignment with his mop earlier that morning) under the theory that if anyone arrives, he can plead a legit excuse (Oh No, I Left My Wallet). It has the bonus of being true, because Sam.

Then, coast clear, he’s supposed to use the bolt cutters to cut a small hole in the barbed-wire fence that separates the loading bay from the back door that leads to the manager’s office, right behind the scraggly-looking bush that all the Joja employees hide their cigarette butts in.

Alex doesn’t know why Sam would try to go through the hole in the fence, but he did. And failed, because the hole is way too small. Sam is stuck in the fence, ass up, arms flailing. And, of course--

That’s when Alex sees the headlights of a big lumbering delivery truck, coming up the road towards the loading bay. Because Joja Never Sleeps©.

_ “Shit!” _

_ “Sam!” _ Sebastian’s voice has gone a little shrill.

“Come on, come on!” Alex says, and he and Sebastian bolt across the driveway, Alex praying fervently to Yoba that the drivers don’t see them. Or the platinum blond idiot wiggling in the fence like a fish dying on a line. 

Alex had always hoped his first felony conviction would be something sexy or awesome. 

Alex’s legs send up clouds of dirt as he slides to the ground, trying to mask as much of Sam as he can with his black sweatshirt. Sebastian arrives a second or two later, wheezing like (well) a smoker.

“Ow ow  _ owwwwwwwwwww!” _

“Sam, shut  _ the hell _ up--” Alex hisses.

“Don’t talk to him like that,” Sebastian snaps. Alex blinks. It's not like they don’t all say things like that to Sam ten thousand times a day. “Now come on, man, stop thrashing, I’ve almost--”

Sam, predictably, does not stop thrashing. Because Sam.

“Ohmygoshohmygoshohmygosh--”

Alex, his thoughts racing, reaches for his walkie-talkie--which, because it once upon a time belonged to Sebastian’s baby sister Maru, is bright pink and covered in grimy metallic robot ballerina stickers. “Haley. Come in, Haley.”

The rumbling of the truck gets louder. They’re partially shielded by a big evergreen bush, but there’s gonna be no hiding them when the driver gets out. 

A crackle of static. “What.”

“We need a distraction!”

“...you owe me, Mulner. Remember our deal.”

“Yeah yeah, just  _ hurry!” _

The walkie talkie goes dead. Sebastian, for reasons only known to Yoba, is unbuckling Sam’s belt while Sam bucks like a mechanical bull. Sebastian’s got his arms around Sam’s waist, and the way they’re positioned makes it look like they’re, like Sebastian is, like Sam is  _ really enjoying _ \--

“What deal?” Sebastian asks, neatly derailing Alex’s train of thought. “Sam,  _ damnitholdstill--!” _

“I agreed to be a naked sushi platter at her bachelorette party,” Alex says. “Let’s hope she stays single. Alright Sam.” Alex grabs ahold of Sam’s thrashing feet. “Time to go.”

“Nonononono--!”

Sam’s yowls are thankfully muffed as Alex shoves him through the hole in the fence. Sam gets through; his jorts aren’t so lucky, and Sebastian is left holding them, open fly and belt buckles flapping sadly in the gentle night breeze. 

Alex can hear the truck door opening, two tired-sounding voices. Any minute, they’ll look over and--

“Hello,  _ boys,” _ says Hayley, in a voice he’s never heard before; it seems to bypass the brain and go straight to the dick. “What’re you doing this time of night?”

“Wow,” Sebastian says quietly. Behind the fence, a dirt-covered and panstless Sam gapes like a fish.

“Go, go!” Alex hisses. Sebastian manages to get himself through the fence no problem. It’s a bit trickier for Alex--he ditches the sweatshirt and the sharp edges of the fence shred the shit out of his back--but he turns around to see two scraggly twenty-something dudes in blue Joja coveralls, swaying, hypnotized, at Hayley, who somehow looks like one of those women in Grandpa’s detective movies who shot their two-bit husband, draped across the hood of the Joja truck like a pinup girl. 

Uh. Wow. She must  _ really want _ that sushi platter.

“Come on, she can’t distract them forever,” Alex says, jerking his head towards the stairs leading up to the keycard door to the managers office.

“I wouldn’t count on it,” Sebastian scoffs. “Give her three minutes and she’ll have their power of attorney.”

“I--” Alex begins, before he and Sebastian turn and… silence. 

“Sam,” Sebastian asks, voice slightly strangled. “Why did you take off your shirt?”

Sam squints, shirt tangled up in his arms, as though this is a trick question. “I dunno? Why, what’re we doing?”

“Get  _ dressed, _ idiot,” Alex says. If only they had someone more reliable to help, like the crazy tramp who lives up in the mountains, or Dusty. 

They leave Sam at the base of the stairs to serve as the world’s least-reassuring lookout. Sebastian and Alex reach the top; when Alex swipes Shane’s borrowed keycard, the lights over the door flash green, but when he tries to turn the handle it remains stubbornly locked.

“Shit, it’s got a manual lock too.” Sebastian says. “Damn. We’re gonna have to call this off.”

Alex is tired, frustrated, and his back hurts like hell. “Aww, man. I owe Haley for nothing.” 

Alex grabs the walkie talkie and brings it up to his face. “Abort, door is locked. Repeat, door is locked.”

“Gimme a minute,” Abigail says after a moment. She’s out front, on lookout duty. “I’ll be right there.”

“Abbers--”

“I said  _ give me a minute.” _

“What, can she pick locks or something?” Alex asks, confused.

Sebastian shrugs. “It’s  _ Abigail.” _

“...Fair.”

While they’re waiting for Abigail, the whispers begin.

<><><>

It happens gradually. The world around Alex goes… faintly silvery, the harsh blue of the fluorescent lamps ringing the Joja compound dimming to almost nothing. The moon seems… larger, somehow--closer, like something that Alex could reach out and touch. The river, visible in patches between the fence posts and bushes, looks like a road of white fire. 

There’s a scent of apple blossoms on the breeze, cut with something close enough to rot that Alex stifles a gag.

_ Don’t. Don’t. Don’t.  _

_ Go go go. _

_ Don’t go don’t go don’t go _

Alex can see them, outside the fence, dancing frantically outside the borders of the compound. The Junimo, dozens, no,  _ hundreds _ of them, spinning and spiralling. At night they glow faintly, pink and green and blue, and their little eyes leave burning phosphorous trails in Alex’s eyes. He presses his back to the corrugated metal walls of the office, legs suddenly weak. His heart is pounding so hard he can feel it in his skull, and sweat starts to run in rivulets down his back, down his face. 

_ Bad no no no no _

_ Danger danger danger _

Sebastian’s mouth is moving. Alex can hear him dimly, distorted, like he’s hearing words underwater. 

“What?  _ What?” _

The world abruptly snaps back into place. Alex blinks, still seeing the burning multicolored spots.

“I said, are you okay?” Sebastian asks. Alex notices that Sebastian doesn’t look much better than he feels, and for a split second, almost too quick to be seen, there’s a hint of that burning magnesium light in the center of his eyes--

“Did you see anything?” Alex demands, grabbing Sebastian’s arm.

“I--” Sebastian swallows. “What?”

“Did you--”

“I’m here,” Abigail whispers, dropping the hood of her black sweatshirt. She also looks pretty rattled--and, for a split second before Alex blinks it away, her body appears outlined in a dark sub-purple corona that hurts his eyes. Sebastian wrenches his arm out of Alex’s grip and makes room for her by the door. 

“Abigail, did you see--” Alex begins.

“Hush, gimme a sec,” she says, pulling a couple of pins out of her hair and squatting down in front of the locked door. “I just saw Haley do a fan dance, if that was your question.”

When Haley fights for the cause, she really fights for the cause. Alex is impressed despite himself. 

It takes Abigail all of twenty seconds to pick the lock; this time, when the keycard swipes and the light over the lock blinks green, the door pops open.

_ “Voila,” _ Abigail says. 

“Since you’re here anyway, you can help us search,” Alex says. “It’ll be quicker with three of us.”

“I--” Abigail goes pale. “I… no. I’m sorry. I can’t.”

“What’re you--”

“I can’t!” Abigail nearly shrieks, eyes wide. “I can’t explain, but I can’t. There’s--” Her eyes flicker over to the fence.

“Waitaminute, Abigail, what did you see?” Alex suppresses the urge to grab her shoulders and shake.

Abigail’s face goes carefully blank, like a porcelain mask. “What did  _ you _ see?”

Alex instantly gets the sweats again. “I--”

“We can talk about this,” Sebastian hisses, opening the office door wide, “ _ later. _ Would you  _ please  _ come on, Alex?”

They duck into the office, leaving Abigail behind. Alex was expecting… oh, something more villainous. Marble floors, rapey statues, maybe a shark tank. Instead it’s just a cramped office, with a little bit of that furious, rodenty smell that spaces get when little men who don’t shower regularly enough spend too much time there. 

Sebastian makes an immediate beeline for the computer while Alex pokes around. The office is disturbingly free of personality. It’s very tidy, but there’s nothing to imply a personal touch. No funny coffee mugs, no hand-scribbled notes, nothing but business stuff and Joja swag, everywhere. Behind the desk is an inspirational poster--at least Alex assumes it’s supposed to be inspirational, the font is cutesy. It features a cartoon version of their mascot Vispo, The All-Seeing Eye, and the words  _ Remember To Keep Joja In Your Soul! _

Weird. 

Paperweights. A baseball cap on a shelf. Everywhere. Joja Joja Joja. 

“Alex,” Sebastian whispers. “Come take a look at this.”

Alex goes around the desk and peers over Sebastian’s shoulder. Alex squints, but he can’t make out much of the words. Screens give him an even bigger headache than books. 

“It’s…” Sebastian lets out a nervous laugh. “It’s a dossier. About my  _ mom. _ It’s… it’s everything about her, man. They’ve got a file like this on _ everyone in town.”  _

“That’s--”

“I’m just gonna copy as much as I can,” Sebastian says, sticking a flash drive into the computer. “It’ll take time to go through it all. But like… they’ve got  _ pictures  _ of her, man, pictures that we haven’t put online. Surveillance cameras, sure, but... shit, they run the photo labs, of  _ course _ they keep copies--”

“Hurry up, man, we gotta get outta here.” 

“Yeah, of course, sorry.” Sebastian shakes his head. “This is… just so messed up.”

Something jumps out at Alex as Sebastian flips through the file directories. It twigs him... something Tahan once said. A folder labeled PHASE 2. 

“Make sure you get that one.” Alex points.

“Gotcha.”

After all of that, the great heist ends… kind of anti-climactically. They lock the door behind them and beat a retreat--Sam, for some reason, is still not dressed. They meet up with Haley across the river, once she extricates herself from her bewitched followers. She walks up with a confused expression, a Joja sweatshirt, and a pair of wallets. 

“Why…” Alex begins.

“I… I don’t know.” Haley looks slightly nonplussed. “They just wanted to give me things, I guess.”

“Throw them in the river and wash your hands,” Abigail advises.

“Wash my everything,” Haley says with a delicate shudder. “You owe me, Alex. Don’t you ever forget it.”

Alex knows he never will. Haley will remind him. 

<><><>

Alex walks Abigail and Haley home, because it’s on the way and he’s a gentleman. Sam wanders off after Sebastian, and more power to him. They stop by Pierre’s first--Abigail left the back window unlocked, for sneaking. Alex’s stomach sinks because he can see the light on at his house--Grandma awaits, full of worry and cookies. The thought of all that Grandmotherly attention hanging over his head makes him wonder if Tahan will put him up for the night. But why bother the guy?

“Such a nice boy,” Abigail says, patting his arm. 

“He is, rather,” says Haley from his other arm. “Ciao, darlings. I can make it the rest of the way.”

“‘Night, Hales.”

She wags a pinky finger at him in farewell before disappearing into the night. 

“Abigail,” Alex begins, then shuts his mouth. 

She turns to him, one purple brow raised. “Yes, Alex?”

_ What did you see? How long have you--what have you--why do your eyes sometimes glow in the dark-- _

He can’t seem to open his mouth. He shrugs, helplessly. 

“Goodnight,” she says gently, climbing in through the window and shutting it behind her. 

“Goodnight,” he says to nobody, before trudging back home to face Hurricane Evelyn. 

<><><>

The next afternoon, while Alex is walking Dusty up by the lake--with Dusty doing his best impression of a smashed birthday cake,  _ Master I am So Tired, Please Carry Me _ \--they get their first lead.

Someone whistles sharply and Alex turns, pulling out his headphones. Sebastian waves to him from the door of his house, looking extremely uncomfortable at being outside, as though any moment he might burst into flames like a vampire. He seems to be trying to touch as little of the fresh mountain air as possible. 

“Hey man,” Alex says. “What’s up?”

“I, uh…” Sebastian bites his lip. “I found something in the info we jacked. I think you should see it first.”

“Oh shit.” That doesn’t sound good.

Alex looks finds a tree where he can tie Dusty-- _ Evil Master Has Imprisoned Me, Please Send Bacon _ \--and follows Sebastian into Robin’s cedar-scented house and then down into Sebastian’s clove-cigarette-scented basement. 

Sebastian looks nervous. Well, he always kind of looks nervous, but right now it seems like it might have a specific source, rather than like… Life Itself. He sits down at his computer. 

“I haven’t found anything really incriminating yet, aside from those frigging dossiers,” Sebastian says. “But I was looking for downloadable files, and… I found last year’s holiday card.”

“A holiday card,” Alex says. “Seriously, dude? This is our lead?”

“Just look.” Sebastian brings up the file.

It’s a family portrait, four people dressed in black, grey, and cream, their expressions various flavors of neutral. There’s an older man, with an elegant silver coif and a flat ruby ring on one hand, who might have the tiniest hint of a smile. He’s side by side with a tall woman in a wrap of grey fur, her silver-nailed hand barely resting on his arm. She has skin like bitter chocolate and white streaks in her hair, and a pair of ludicrously plump lips pulled into the slightest hint of a sneer. Next to her, seated on a plush leather armchair, is an eerily familiar-looking man, perhaps in his mid-thirties, movie-star handsome with his legs elegantly crossed, broad-shouldered and athletic. And standing behind him, with long, tapered hands on the back of the armchair and a gut-wrenchingly familiar expression of guarded anxiety on his face, is Tahan. There’s no mistaking him.

Something in Alex’s mind goes white.

Written along the bottom of the card in a flowery script are the words  _ Religiously-Neutral Non-Actionable Seasonal Holiday Greetings from your loving owners, Cyrus Septimus, Esobet Bathori, Maximus Nereus, and Alcibiades Tahan al-Joja! _

Alcibiades Tahan al-Joja.

Joja.

_ “Fuck,” _ is all Alex can think to say. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few notes for you, my little cabbages:
> 
> 1-Yes, Tahan has been a Good Place reference this whole time, fite me.  
> 2-I stole that joke from Bob's Burgers, fite me  
> 3-The Joja mascot is just eggshell blue Bill Cipher, because I'm a dork, fite me.
> 
> Love you all. See you soon.


End file.
